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Title: Imperial Palace
Author: Bennett, Arnold [Enoch Arnold] (1867-1931)
Date of first publication: October 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:
London, Toronto, Melbourne, and Sydney:
Cassell, August 1933 [eighth edition]
Date first posted: 24 June 2017
Date last updated: 24 June 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1447
This ebook was produced by:
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.
IMPERIAL PALACE
By
ARNOLD BENNETT
CASSELL
& Company Limited
_London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney_
First Edition (first issue, limited, in 2 vols.)
October 1930; second issue at 10_s._ 6_d._
Second Edition October 1930
Third Edition October 1930
Fourth Edition January 1931
Fifth Edition April 1931
Sixth Edition September 1931
Seventh Edition (first cheap edition) July 1932
Eighth Edition August 1933
Printed in Great Britain
TO
GEORGE REEVES-SMITH
FROM ONE OF THE WARMEST
OF HIS ADMIRERS
NOTE
ALL the eighty-five speaking characters in this novel are
entirely fictitious, except one, which is a very partial
portrait of a man now dead. It is not possible to avoid
occasional chance resemblances between fiction and life, but any
living persons who imagine themselves to be depicted in the
story are hereby authoritatively informed that they err.
A. B.
CONTENTS
I. 4 A.M.
II. Arrivals
III. The Meat-Buyer
IV. The Drive
V. Gracie at Smithfield
VI. Birth of Day
VII. The Hotel Waking Up
VIII. The New Life
IX. Conference
X. Laundry
XI. Shades
XII. Daughter and Father
XIII. Green Parrot
XIV. Volivia
XV. Cuisine
XVI. Escape
XVII. 2 A.M. to 3 A.M.
XVIII. The Vacant Situation
XIX. Powder and Rouge
XX. The Board
XXI. Shareholders
XXII. The Resolution
XXIII. Susan
XXIV. Dogs
XXV. Early Morn
XXVI. Nerve-Storm
XXVII. Crime
XXVIII. Cousin
XXIX. Violet's Arrival
XXX. Official Interview
XXXI. Bowels of the Hotel
XXXII. Initiation
XXXIII. A Friend
XXXIV. Violet and Mac
XXXV. Return to Eighth
XXXVI. Mess Lunch
XXXVII. The New Millionaire
XXXVIII. False Reprieve
XXXIX. Housekeepers
XL. Negotiation
XLI. An Attack
XLII. Ceria and Sir Henry
XLIII. Sabbath
XLIV. The Vamp
XLV. The Panjandrum's Return
XLVI. Another Conference
XLVII. New Year's Eve
XLVIII. Tessa
XLIX. New Year's Morning
L. In the Rain
LI. After the Storm
LII. Telephone
LIII. Electrons
LIV. Caligula
LV. On the Boulevard
LVI. Declaration
LVII. The Glove
LVIII. The Lovely Milkmaid
LIX. Temper
LX. The Cash-Girl
LXI. The Helpmeet
LXII. Melodrama
LXIII. Violet and Ceria
LXIV. His Letter
LXV. Ceria's Office
LXVI. Her Letter
LXVII. Works
LXVIII. The Scene
LXIX. Easy-Chair
LXX. The Duncannon Affair
LXXI. Night-Work
LXXII. Queen Anne
LXXIII. The Supper
IMPERIAL PALACE
CHAPTER I
4 A.M.
I
Evelyn came down by the lift into the great front-hall. One of the
clocks there showed seven minutes to four; the other showed six minutes
to four. He thought: "I should have had time to shave. This punctuality
business is getting to be a mania with me." He smiled sympathetically,
forgivingly, at his own weakness, which the smile transformed into a
strength. He had bathed; he had drunk tea; he was correctly dressed, in
the informal style which was his--lounge-suit, soft collar, soft hat,
light walking-stick, no gloves; but he had not shaved. No matter. There
are dark men who must shave every twelve hours; their chins are blue.
Evelyn was neither dark nor fair; he might let thirty hours pass without
a shave, and nobody but an inquisitive observer would notice the
negligence.
The great front-hall was well lighted; but the lamps were islands in the
vast dusky spaces; at 2 a.m. the chandeliers--sixteen lamps
apiece--which hung in the squares of the panelled ceiling ceased to
shower down their spendthrift electricity on the rugs and the concrete
floor impressively patterned in huge lozenges of black and white. Behind
the long counters to the right of the double revolving doors at the main
entrance shone the two illuminated signs, "Reception" and "Enquiries,"
always at the same strength day and night. The foyer down the steps,
back beyond the hall, had one light. The restaurant down the steps
beyond the foyer had one light. The reading-room, cut out of the hall by
glass partitions, had no light. The grill-room, which gave on a broad
corridor opposite the counters, had several lights; in theory it opened
for breakfasts at 6 a.m., but in fact it was never closed, nor its
kitchen closed.
Reyer, the young night-manager, in stiff shirt and dinner-jacket, was
sitting at the Reception counter, his fair, pale, bored, wistful face
bent over a little pile of documents. An Englishman of French
extraction, he was turning night into day and day into night in order to
learn a job and something about human nature. He would lament, mildly,
that he never knew what to call his meals; for with him dinner was
breakfast and breakfast dinner; as for lunch, he knew it no more. He had
been night-manager for nearly a year; and Evelyn had an eye on him, had
hopes of him--and he had hopes of Evelyn.
As Evelyn approached the counter Reyer respectfully rose.
"Morning, Reyer."
"Good morning, Mr. Orcham. You're up early."
"Anything on the night-report?" Evelyn asked, ignoring Reyer's remark.
"Nothing much, sir. A lady left suite 341 at three o'clock."
"Taxi or car?"
"Walked," said Reyer the laconic.
"Let me see the book."
Reyer opened a manuscript volume and pushed it across the counter.
Evelyn read, without any comment except "Um!" At 10 a.m. the
night-report would be placed before him, typewritten, in his private
office. He moved away. Near the revolving doors stood Samuel Butcher
(referred to, behind his back, as Long Sam), the head night-porter, and
a couple of his janissaries, all in blue and gold.
"Well, Sam," Evelyn greeted the giant cheerfully.
"Morning, sir," Sam saluted.
The janissaries, not having been accosted, took care not to see Evelyn.
"I gather you haven't had to throw anyone out to-night?" Evelyn waved
his cane.
"No, sir." Sam laughed, proud of the directorial attention.
Evelyn pulled out a cigarette. Instantly both the janissaries leapt to
different small tables on which were matches. The winner struck a match
and held it to Evelyn's cigarette.
"Thanks," Evelyn murmured, and, puffing, strolled towards the back of
the hall, where he glanced at himself in a mighty square column faced
with mirror.
II
No! The nascent beard was completely invisible. Suit correct, stylish.
Handkerchief peeping correctly out of the pocket. Necktie--he adjusted
the necktie ever so little. Shoes correct--not a crease in them. Well,
perhaps the features lacked distinction; the angle of the nose was a bit
too acute; the lower lip heavy, somewhat sensual. But what friendly keen
brown eyes! What delicate ears! And the chin--how enigmatic! The chin
would puzzle any reader of the human countenance. Forty-seven. Did he
feel forty-seven? Could he even believe that he was forty-seven? He felt
thirty--thirty-one. And the simpleton thought that he looked at most
thirty-five. In two and a half years however, he would be fifty. God!
What a prospect! Well, he didn't care one damn how old he was, or
looked, so long as he felt.... On the whole, quite a presentable
creature. But nobody would glance twice at him in the street. Nobody
could possibly guess that he was anyone out of the ordinary. A pity,
possibly. Yet what is, is, and must be accepted with philosophy.
Nevertheless, he was acquainted with idiots, asses, greenhorns and
charlatans whose appearance was so distinguished that they could not
enter a restaurant without arousing respectful curiosity. Funny world.
The séance at the mirror lasted three seconds--time to adjust the
necktie, no more. He moved off. The clock over the counter showed five
minutes to four. Clocks had their moods; they raced, they stood still,
in discordance with the mood of the beholder, maliciously intent on
exasperating him.
Within recent months Evelyn had hung the walls of the great hall with
large, old coloured prints of antique, sunk or broken-up Atlantic
liners, and underneath each a smaller photograph of a modern vessel. He
glanced at an American print of a French liner of the sixties, paddle
and sail. He read the quaint legend beneath: "Length 375 feet. Breadth
of beam 46. Depth of hold 33. Burthen 3,500 tons. Horse-power, 1,250."
_Burthen._ Comic! Yet in her time this ship had been a crack. Under the
print was a photograph of the "Ile-de-France." Yes, this idea of his of
marine prints in the hall had been extremely successful. It was aimed at
American visitors, who constituted sixty per cent. of the clientèle, and
it hit them all day and every day. Difficult at certain hours to pass
through the great hall without seeing an American gazing entranced at a
marine print.
That contrarious clock still showed five minutes to four. Long Sam stood
moveless; his janissaries stood moveless; young Reyer sat moveless. The
electric lamps burned with the stoical endurance of organisms which have
passed beyond time into eternity. The great hall seemed to lie under an
enchantment. Its darkened extensions, the foyer and the immeasurable
restaurant, seemed to lie under an enchantment. The brighter corridor
and grill-room seemed to lie under an enchantment. Diminished men
awaited with exhaustless patience the birth of day, as they might have
awaited the birth of a child.
CHAPTER II
ARRIVALS
I
Sound and lights of a big car, heard and seen through the glazed
frontage of the hall! Revolution of the doors! Long Sam was already
outside; his janissaries were outside; the doors were whizzing with the
speed of the men's exit. Reyer came round the counter. The enchantment
was smashed to bits: phenomenon as swift and unexpected as a
street-accident. Evelyn wondered who could be arriving with such a
grandiose pother at four o'clock in the morning. But his chief concern
was the clock, which now showed three minutes to four. If Jack Cradock
did not appear within three minutes the stout, faithful little man would
be late for his rendezvous. And it was Jack's business to be not merely
on time but before time. Evelyn was uneasy. Uneasily he glanced down the
dim vista of the foyer and the restaurant, his back to the doors through
which Jack ought to enter. He heard voices: Long Sam's, Reyer's and
another's.
He turned, in spite of himself, at the tones of that third voice,
polite, but curt, assured, authoritative. Between a felt hat and a huge
overcoat he saw a face with which he was not unacquainted, Sir Henry
Savott's (baronet). Then he remembered that Sir Henry, passenger by the
"Caractacus"--45,000 tons--from New York, had reserved two suites
overlooking the Park. A small, spry, rather desiccated face, with small,
searching eyes, a clipped, iron-grey military moustache, and a bony,
imperious chin. Staring curiously about as he talked to Reyer, Sir Henry
descried Evelyn, and, unceremoniously leaving Reyer, stepped spryly
towards the Director, who advanced to meet him in the middle of the
hall. False youthfulness, thought Evelyn, proud of his own comparative
youthfulness. The fellow must be fifty-seven, and pretending to be
forty-seven--unsuccessfully! The two shook hands with mutual smiles.
"Hope you haven't got up specially to meet us," said Sir Henry. "Too
bad!"
"No," said Evelyn quietly and carelessly.
The infernal impudence of these spoilt millionaires! To imagine that he,
Evelyn, would get up specially to meet anybody on earth!
"I'm glad," said Sir Henry, who was sorry, hiding all consciousness of a
rebuff.
"See. You've come by the 'Caractacus'?"
"Yes. My daughter has driven me and her maid and some of the light stuff
up from Southampton. She's the devil's own driver, Gracie is,
particularly at night. There are two or three cars behind us. But most
of the passengers preferred to have their sleep out on the ship and wait
for the boat-train."
"You're three days late," said Evelyn.
"Yes," Sir Henry admitted.
"Funny rumours about that ship," said Evelyn.
"Yes," said Sir Henry darkly, in a manner definitely to close the
subject of rumours. He was a large shareholder in the company which
owned the line.
Evelyn perceived two girls in conversation with an assiduous and
impressed Reyer. The young man's deportment was quite good, if a trifle
too subservient. One of the girls wore a magnificent leather coat.
Doubtless Gracie, celebrated in the illustrated press for her thrilling
performances at the wheel at Brooklands. The other, less warmly clad,
must be the maid.
Gracie looked suddenly round, and Evelyn saw her face, which however he
hardly recognised from the photographs of it in illustrated papers. At a
distance of twenty feet he felt the charm of it--vivacious, agreeable,
aware of its own power. Perhaps very beautiful, but he could not be
sure. Anyhow, the face--and the gestures--of an individuality. Evelyn at
once imagined her as a mistress; and as he fenced amiably with the
amiable Sir Henry, who he had some reason to believe would one day soon
be trying to engage him in high finance, his mind dwelt upon the idea of
her as a mistress. He was not an over-sensual man; he was certainly not
lascivious. He was guilty of no bad taste in conceiving this girl, whom
he now saw for the first time, as a mistress in the privacy of his
heart. What goes on in a man's heart is his own affair. And similar
thoughts, on meeting young and attractive women, wander in and out of
the hearts of the most staid and serious persons, unsuspected by a world
of beholders apt to reason too conventionally. Evelyn's was an entirely
serious soul, but it had a mortal envelope. He was starved of women. For
years women had been his secret preoccupation. He desired intimacy with
some entrancing, perfect woman. Not the marital intimacy. No. Never
again the marital intimacy. He would make sacrifices for the desired
intimacy. But not the supreme sacrifice. Work first, career first, woman
second, even were she another Helen.
For nearly twenty years Evelyn had been a widower. Six weeks after his
marriage a daily series of inescapable facts had compelled him to admit
to himself that his wife was a furiously self-centred neurotic who
demanded as a natural right everything in exchange for nothing. An
incurable. He had excused her on the ground that she was not to be
blamed for her own mental constitution. He had tolerated her because he
was of those who will chew whatever they may have bitten off. He had
protected himself by the application of the theory that all that happens
to a man happens in his own mind and nowhere else, and therefore that he
who is master of his own mind is fortified against fate. A dogma; but it
suited his case. At the end of three years Adela had died, an unwilling
mother with a terrific grievance, in child-bed; and the child had not
survived her. The whole experience was horrible. Evelyn mourned. His
sorrow was also a sigh of transcendent relief. Agonising relief, but
relief. Not till the episode was finished did he confess to his mind how
frightfully he had suffered and how imperfectly he had been master of
his mind. He had never satisfactorily answered the great, humiliating
question: "How could I have been such a colossal fool, so blind, so
deaf, so utterly mistaken in my estimate of a woman?" He was left with a
quiet but tremendous prejudice against marriage. I have had luck this
time, he thought. Once is enough. Never again! Never again! He divided
wives into those who were an asset and those who were a liability; and
his strong inclination was to conclude, in the final judgment, that of
all the wives he knew not one was an asset. One or two of them might
have the appearance of an asset, yet if you could penetrate to
essentials, if you could learn the inner conjugal secrets, was there one
who was not a liability? He tried to stand away from himself and see
that he was prejudiced, but he could never honestly convict himself of a
prejudice in this matter.
He saw the maid and Reyer pass towards the lift like apparitions. He
noticed that the pretty but tired maid was well-dressed, probably in
clothes that a few months earlier her mistress had been wearing; but
that nevertheless every nervous movement and glance of the girl divulged
her station. He heard Sir Henry's voice and his own like faint echoes.
He saw the janissaries pass towards the lift like apparitions carrying
ghostly suit-cases. He saw Miss Savott herself go towards the doors like
an apparition, then hesitate and glide towards her father like an
apparition. And in those brief seconds the sole reality of his mind was
the three years of marriage with Adela, years whose thousand days and a
day swept in detail through his memory with the miraculous rapidity of a
life re-lived by a drowning man.
"Gracie, this is my friend, Mr. Orcham, the king of his world--I've told
you. My daughter."
And now Gracie was the reality. Instinctively he put one hand to his
chin as he raised his hat with the other. Why had he not shaved? The
hair on his enigmatic chin seemed half an inch long.
"I do hope you haven't got up specially to meet us," said Gracie.
Her father's words, but spoken differently! What a rich, low, emotional,
sympathetic voice, full of modulations! A voice like shot silk, changing
at every syllable!
"No, I didn't," he replied. "But if I'd known you'd be here so early I
certainly might have done. The fact is, I've got up to go with my
meat-buyer to Smithfield Market."
He looked and saw the faithful Cradock standing meekly expectant at the
entrance. The dilatory clock at last showed four.
"I must just lock up the car," said Gracie. "Shan't be two minutes." She
ran off.
"I'm going to bed," Sir Henry called after her.
"All right, daddy," she called back, not stopping.
"I'm fortunate enough to be able to sleep whenever I want to!" said Sir
Henry to Evelyn. "Useful, eh?"
"Very," Evelyn agreed.
Wonderful with what naïve satisfaction these millionaires attributed to
themselves the characteristics of Napoleon! He accompanied Napoleon to
the lift, and stayed for a moment chatting about the hotel. It was as if
they were manoeuvring for places before crossing the line in a yacht
race.
II
When Evelyn returned to the hall Gracie Savott also was returning. She
now carried the leather coat on her arm, revealing a beige frock.
"No, no," she said when he offered to take the coat. "But have you got a
gasper?"
"I never smoke anything else," said Evelyn.
"Neither do I," said Gracie. "Thanks."
He thought: "What next?"
The next was that Gracie moved a few feet to a table, Evelyn following,
and put the newly lighted cigarette on an ash-tray, opened her bag, and
began to titivate her face. She was absorbed in this task, earnest over
it; yet she could talk the while. He somehow could not examine her
features in detail; but he could see that she had a beautiful figure.
What slim ankles! What wrists! _Les attaches fines._ She had a serious
expression, as one engaged on a matter of grave importance. She dabbed;
she critically judged the effect of each dab, gazing closely at her face
in the hand-mirror. And Evelyn unshaved!
"Has daddy really gone to bed?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the
mirror.
"He has."
"He's a great sleeper before the Lord. I suppose he told you about our
cockleshell the 'Caractacus.'"
"Not a word. What about it? We did hear she'd been rolling a bit."
"Rolling a bit! When we were a day out from New York, she rolled the
dining-room windows under water. The fiddles were on the tables, but she
threw all the crockery right over the fiddles. I was the only woman at
dinner, and there wasn't absolutely a legion of men either. They said
that roll smashed seventeen thousand pounds' worth of stuff. I thought
she'd never come up again. The second officer told daddy next day that
_he_ never thought she'd come up again. It was perfectly thrilling. But
she did come up. Everyone says she's the worst roller that ever sailed
the seas."
During this narration Gracie's attention to the mirror did not relax.
"Well," said Evelyn calmly. "Of course it must have been pretty bad
weather to make a big ship like that three days late."
"Weather!" said Gracie. "The weather was awful, perfectly dreadful. But
it wasn't the weather that made her three days late. She split right
across. Yes, split right across. The observation-deck. A three-inch
split. Anyhow I could put my foot into it. Of course it was roped off.
But they showed it to daddy. They had to. And I saw it with him."
"Do you mean to say----" Evelyn began, incredulous.
"Yes, I do mean to say," Gracie stopped him. "You ask daddy. Ask anyone
who was on board. That's why she's going to be laid up for three months.
They talk about 're-conditioning.' But it's the split."
"But how on earth----?" Evelyn was astounded more than he had ever been
astounded.
"Oh! Strain, or something. They _said_ it was something to do with them
putting two new lifts in, and removing a steel cross-beam or whatever
they call it. But daddy says don't you believe it. She's too long for
her strength, and she won't stand it in any weather worth talking about.
Of course she was German built and the Germans can't build like us.
Don't you agree?"
"No. I don't," said Evelyn, with a smile to soften the contradiction,
slightly lifting his shoulders.
"Oh, you don't? That's interesting now."
Evelyn raised his cane a few inches to greet Jack Cradock, who replied
by raising his greenish hard hat.
"Now," thought Evelyn, somewhere in the midst of the brain-disturbance
due to Gracie's amazing news. "This is all very well, but what about
Smithfield? She isn't quite a young girl. She must be twenty-five, and
she knows that I haven't got up at four o'clock for small-talk with
women. Yet she behaves as if I hadn't anything to do except listen to
her. She may stay chattering here for half an hour."
He resented this egotistical thoughtlessness so characteristic of the
very rich. At the same time he was keenly enjoying her presence. And he
liked her expensive stylishness. The sight of a really smart woman
always gave him pleasure. In his restaurant, when he occasionally
inspected it as a spy from a corner behind a screen, he always looked
first for the fashionable, costly frocks, and the more there were the
better he was pleased. He relished, too, the piquancy of the contrast
between Gracie's clothes and the rough masculinity of her achievements
on Brooklands track in the monstrous cars which Sir Henry had had
specially built for her, and her night-driving on the road from
Southampton. Only half an hour ago she had probably been steering a big
car at a mile a minute on a dark curving road. And here with delicate
hands she was finishing the minute renewal of her delicate face. Her
finger-nails were stained a bright red.
So the roll from which nobody hoped that the ship would recover, the
roll which had broken seventeen thousand pounds' worth of stuff, was
merely 'thrilling' to her. And she had put her little foot into the
split across the deck. What a sensation that affair ought to cause! What
unique copy for the press! Nevertheless, would it cause a sensation?
Would the press exploit it? He fancied not. The press would give
descriptive columns to the marvels and luxuries of a new giant liner.
But did anybody ever read in any paper--even in any anti-capitalistic
paper--that a famous vessel rolled, or vibrated, or shook? Never! Never
a word in derogation! As for the incredible cross-split, result of
incorrect calculations of the designer, no editor would dare to refer to
it in print. To do so would damage Atlantic traffic for a whole
season--and incidentally damage the hotel business. The
four-million-pound crack was protected by the devoted adherence of the
press to the dogma that transatlantic liners are perfect. And let no one
breathe a word concerning the relation between editors and
advertisement-managers.
Miss Savott had kept the leather coat on her arm while doing her face.
The face done, and her bag shut again, she dropped the cloak on the
small table by her side. Womanish! Proof of a disordered and
inconsequent mind. She resumed the cigarette, which had been steadily
sending up a vertical wavering wisp of smoke.
"Mr. Orcham," she said ingratiatingly, intimately, stepping near to him.
"Will you do something for me?... I simply daren't ask you."
"If I can," he smiled. (Had experience taught her that she was
irresistible?)
"Oh, you _can_! I've been dying for years to see Smithfield Market in
the middle of the night. Would you mind very much taking me with you? I
would drive you there. The car's all ready. I didn't lock it up after
all."
Here was his second amazement. These people were incredible--as
incredible as the split in the 'Caractacus.' How did she suppose he
could transact his business at Smithfield with a smart young woman
hanging on to him?
She added, like an imploring child:
"I won't be in the way. I'd be as small as a mouse."
They read your thoughts.
Not 'as quiet as a mouse.' 'As small as a mouse.' Better. She had a gift
for making her own phrases.
"But surely you must be terribly tired. I've had four and a half hours'
sleep."
"Me! Tired! I'm like father--and you--I'm never tired. Besides, I slept
my head off on the ship."
She looked appealingly up at him. Yes, irresistible! And she well knew
it!
"Well, if you really aren't too tired, I shall be delighted. And the
market is very interesting."
And in fact he was delighted. There were grave disadvantages, naturally;
but he dismissed them from his mind, to make room for the anticipation
of being driven by her through the night-streets of London. Sitting by
her! He was curious to see one of these expert racing drivers, and
especially the fastest woman-driver in the world, at the wheel.
"You're frightfully kind," said she. "I'll just----"
"How did you know I'm never tired?" he interrupted her.
"I could see it in your shoulders," she answered. "You aren't, are you?"
"Not often," he said, proud, thrilled, feverish.
"See it in my shoulders," he thought. "Odd little creature. Her brain's
impish. That's what it is. Well, perhaps she can see it in my
shoulders." Indeed he was proud.
"I'll just fly upstairs one moment. Shan't keep you. Where's the lift?"
But she had descried the lift and was gone.
"Reyer," he called. "Just see Miss Savott to her suite."
Reyer ran. The liftman judiciously waited for him.
And Evelyn, Nizam of the immense organism of the hotel, reflected like
an ingenuous youth:
"I know everyone thinks I'm very reserved. And perhaps I am. But she's
got right through that, _into_ me. And she's the first. She must have
taken a liking to me. Here I've only known her about six minutes and
she's----" Somewhere within him a point of fire glowed. He advanced
rather self-consciously towards the waiting Cradock. And, advancing, he
remembered that, on her first disappearance, after saying she would be
two minutes, Gracie Savott had been away only half a minute. She was not
the sort of girl to keep a man waiting. No!... But barely half his
own age.
CHAPTER III
THE MEAT-BUYER
I
Jack Cradock's age was fifty-nine. He was short, stoutish, very honest,
and very shrewd. His clothes were what is called 'good,' that is to say,
of good everlasting cloth well sewed; but they had no style except
Jack's style. His income nearly touched a thousand a year. With his
savings he bought house-property. No stocks and shares for him. He had
as fine an eye for small house-property as for a lamb's carcass. He had
always been in the Smithfield trade. His father had been a drover when
cattle strolled leisurely to London over roads otherwise empty. He went
to bed at eight o'clock, and rose at three--save on Sundays. Daylight
London seemed to him rather odd, unnatural.
He had been meat-buyer to the hotel in the years when it was merely a
hotel among hotels, before Evelyn took control of it. In those years
there existed in the buying departments abuses which irked Jack's
honesty. He saw them completely abolished. He saw the hotel develop from
a hotel among hotels into the unique hotel, whose sacred name was
uttered in a tone different from the tone used for the names of all
other hotels. He recognised in Evelyn a fellow-devotee of honesty in a
world only passably honest; a man of scrupulous fairness, a man of
terrific industry, a man of most various ability and most quiet
authority, a real swell. Jack had heard that Evelyn gave lectures on
wines to his own wine-waiters, that he tasted every wine before
purchase, and chose every brand of cigar himself; and Jack marvelled
thereat. He had heard, further, that Evelyn knew everything about
vegetables; but Covent Garden, which he regarded as a den of thieves,
had no interest for Jack. Apart from potatoes and occasional broad beans
and spring onions, he never ate vegetables; salads he could not bear.
Of course Evelyn did not know as much about meat as Jack--who did?--but
he knew a lot, and he did not pretend to more knowledge than he
possessed. That was what Jack liked in Evelyn: absence of pretence. He
adored Evelyn with a deep admiration and a humble, sturdy affection
equally deep. Evelyn often asked after his wife, and the boy in the
navy.
He was now waiting for his august governor with impatience well
concealed. He saw Gracie run off to the lift. He himself had never been
in any but the service-lifts. He had never seen the restaurant except
when it was empty and the table-tops dark green instead of white, and
the chairs packed; but he knew the restaurant-kitchen, and had frequent
interviews with the gesticulatory and jolly French chef in the chef's
office outside whose door two clerks worked. He had never been in any
bedroom. He imagined all manner of strange and even unseemly happenings
in the suites. He rarely had glimpses of the hotel's clientèle, and his
shrewd notion was that he would be antipathetic to it. Still, it wanted
the best meat, and he provided the best meat; and that was something. He
strove conscientiously to think well of the clientèle.
He did not like the look of Miss Gracie Savott. She coincided too
closely with what he would describe in his idiom as 'a bit too tasty.'
He was aware that women, more correctly ladies, smoked, but he objected
to their smoking, especially the young ones; his married daughter,
nevertheless a fine and capricious piece, did not smoke, and had she
attempted to do so would probably have been dissuaded from persevering
by physical violence at the joint hands of her father and her husband.
As a boy he had seen ancient hags smoking short clay pipes on the
house-steps of large villages. A hag, however, was a hag, and a cutty
pipe suited her indrawn lips. But that a fresh young girl, personable,
virginal, should brazenly puff tobacco--that was different.
Nor could he approve of Gracie's general demeanour towards the governor.
Too bold, too insinuating, too impudent! Hardly decent! Most shocking of
all was the spectacle of Gracie daring--daring to paint and powder her
saucy face in the presence of the governor. Shameless! And the governor
tolerated it! If the governor had not been above all criticism Jack
would have ventured in his heart to criticise the demeanour of the
governor towards Gracie. Too boyish, too youthful; a hint of the swain
about it! Well, the chit was gone now.
II
The governor strolled slowly down the hall to the doors where Jack stood
waiting. A little self-conscious, the governor was, in his walk. Seldom
before had Jack seen the governor self-conscious. His confidence in the
governor was a great solid rock. He felt a momentary tremor in the rock.
It ceased; it was not a tremor; it was imperceptible: he had been
mistaken. Yet...
"Morning, Jack. Sorry to keep you. Shan't be a minute."
"Morning, governor. No hurry, but we ought to be getting along. I have a
taxi waiting." The customary tranquil benevolence of the governor's tone
reassured him.
"Just tell me again about that Jebson young man. I want to know exactly
before I see him. You said he's only recently come into the business."
"Yes, sir," Jack began. "And if you ask me, he thinks he's the emperor
of Smithfield. His uncle's a tough 'un, but nothing to young Charlie
Jebson. I get on pretty comfortably with everybody in the markets except
him. Tries to make out he don't care whether he does business or not.
But he can't put that across me. No! And everybody but him knows he
can't. His uncle knows it. Ten shilling a stone's the right price for
the best Scotch. And Charlie knows that too. But 'ten and six,' he says.
'Ten and two,' I say, wishing to meet him. 'Ten and two! You've got the
b. ten and two fever, Cradock,' he says. 'And you've got the b.
half-guinea fever,' I says. 'Don't ask me to come back,' I says.
'Because I shan't. I've got my best coat on,' I says. Then he turns on
me and gives me a basinful, and I give him one. Nothing doing, governor.
And his uncle's afraid of him. It was all over the Market."
"Well," said Evelyn, with a faint, mild smile. "We'll give him a miss in
future."
"Yes, governor," said Jack anxiously. "But supposing he takes it,
supposing he accepts of it! Jebsons have the finest Scotch beef in the
market. It was Charlie's grandfather as started the Scotch beef trade in
Smithfield. And the best Scotch--it's none so easy to come by. Sometimes
three days and I don't see a side I fancy--not what you may call _the_
best."
"Try him with ten and four."
"Yes, governor, and have all the rest of 'em jumping at me. Besides, I
told him ten and two was my last word."
"That's enough," said Evelyn. "If you said it you said it, and we shan't
go back on you, even if we have to buy Argentine!" He soothingly patted
Jack's shoulder.
Jack was more than soothed--he was delighted. This was the rock, and
never had it quivered.
"The fact is," said Jack in an easier tone, "Charlie's got it into his
head that I'm making a bit on it. And that's why when you said you'd
come up with me one morning and show yourself, I thought it 'ud be a
good move. If that won't settle Master Charlie, I don't know what will."
To himself Jack was thinking: "Well then, why doesn't he come? I could
have told him all this in the taxi. And this is the first time I've ever
had to tell him anything twice. I'm going to be late."
"Listen!" said Evelyn, after some more unnecessary talk. "You go on.
Take the taxi you've got. I'll follow. I'll ask for Jebsons', and you'll
find me somewhere near it. Sir Henry Savott--very important customer and
a very important man too, in the City--wants me to take his daughter and
show her Smithfield. Bit awkward. Couldn't refuse though. They have a
car here. I might get there before you, Jack." Evelyn laughed.
Jack mistrusted the laugh. He had no suspicion that the paragon of
honesty had told him a lie; but he mistrusted the tone of voice as well
as the laugh. Something a wee bit funny about it.
"Do you mean that young lady you were talking to, governor?" Jack asked
in a voice that vibrated with apprehension.
"Yes, that's the one. Off you go now."
Jack passed quickly in silence through the revolving doors. He was
thunderstruck. He could hardly have been more perturbed if the entire
hotel had fallen about his ears. The entire hotel had indeed fallen
about his ears. The governor, the pattern, the exemplar, the perfect
serious man, taking that prancing hussy into Smithfield Market! Of all
places! There was never a woman to be seen in Smithfield before nine
o'clock, unless it might be a street-singer with her man going home
after giving a show outside the Cock Tavern. The talk to-morrow morning!
The jokes he'd have to hear afterwards--and answer with better jokes!
Rock? The rock was wobbling from side to side, ready to crash, ready to
crush him. He climbed heavily into the taxi, sighing.
CHAPTER IV
THE DRIVE
I
For the first ten minutes of waiting Evelyn forgave the girl. During the
second ten minutes he grew resentful. It was just like these
millionaires to assume that nothing really mattered except their own
convenience. Did she suppose that he had risen at three-thirty for the
delight of frittering away twelve, sixteen, nineteen irrecoverable
minutes of eternity while she lolled around in her precious suite?
Monstrous! Worse, he was becoming a marked man to Reyer, Long Sam, and
the janissaries. They did not yet know that he was waiting for a girl;
but they would know the moment she appeared and went off with him. Worse
still, she was destroying the character with which he had privately
endowed her. She arrived, smiling. And in an instant he had forgotten
the twenty minutes, as one instantly forgets twenty days of bad weather
when a fine day dawns.
"Sorry to keep you. Complications," said she, with composure.
He wondered whether the complications had been caused by a forbidding
father.
She had changed her hat, and put on a thin, dark, inconspicuous cloak.
The car was Leviathan. A landaulette body, closed. She opened one of its
front-doors, and picked up a pair of loose gloves from the driver's
seat. An attendant janissary found himself forestalled, and had to stand
unhelpful.
"Open?" she asked, in a tone expecting an affirmative answer.
"Rather."
"No. I'll do it. This is a one-girl hood. You might just wind down the
window on your side."
In ten seconds the car was open.
"But I'm going to sit by you," said Evelyn.
She was lowering the glass partition behind the driver's seat.
"Of course," said she. "But I like it all open so that the wind can blow
through."
By the manner in which she manoeuvred Leviathan out of the courtyard,
which an early cleaner had encumbered with a long gushing hose-pipe,
Evelyn knew at once that she was an expert of experts. In a moment they
were in Birdcage Walk. In another moment they were out of Birdcage Walk,
and slipping into Whitehall. In yet another moment they were in the
Strand. It was still night. The sun had not given the faintest
announcement to the revolving earth's sombre eastern sky that he was
mounting towards the horizon. There was an appreciable amount of
traffic. She never hesitated, not for the fraction of a second. Her
judgment was instantaneous and infallible. Her accelerations and
decelerations, her brakings, could hardly be perceived. Formidable
Leviathan was silent. Not a murmur beneath the bonnet. But what
speed--in traffic! Evelyn saw the finger of the speedometer rise to
forty--forty-two.
"Do you know the way?" he asked.
"I do," she replied.
Strange that she should know the way to Smithfield.
Suddenly she said:
"What brought _you_ into the hotel business?"
He replied as suddenly:
"The same thing that brought you to motoring. Instinct. I was always
fond of handling _people_, and organising."
"Always? Do you mean even when you were a boy?"
"Yes, when I was a boy. You know, clubs and things, and
field-excursions. I managed the refreshment department at Earl's Court
one year. Then through some wine-merchant I got the management of the
Wey Hotel at Weybridge. I rebuilt that. Then I had to add two wings to
it."
"But this present show of yours?"
"Oh! Well. They wanted a new manager here, and they sent for me. But I
wouldn't leave the Wey. So to get me they bought the Wey."
"And what happened to the Wey?"
"Nothing. I'm still running it. Going down there this morning. Can't go
every day. When you've got the largest luxury hotel in the world on your
hands----"
"The largest?"
"The largest."
"Have you been to America? I thought in America----"
"Yes. All over America. I expected to learn a bit in America, but I
didn't. You mean those '2,000 bedrooms--2,000 bathrooms' affairs. Ever
stayed in one? No, of course you haven't. Not your sort. Too wholesale
and rough-and-ready. Not what _we_ call luxury hotels. Rather behind the
times. They haven't got past 'period'-furnishing. Tudor style. Jacobean
style. Louis Quinze room. And so on. And as for bathrooms--well, they
have to come to my 'show' to see bathrooms."
He spoke as it were ruthlessly, but very simply and quietly. When she
spoke she did not turn her head. She seemed to be speaking in a trance.
He could examine her profile at his ease. Yes, she was beautiful.
II
At Ludgate Circus, a white-armed policeman was directing traffic under
electric lamps just as in daylight.
"How funny!" she said, swinging round to the left so acutely that
Evelyn's shoulder touched hers.
In no time they would reach their destination. For this reason and no
other he regretted the high speed. The fresh wind that precedes the dawn
invigorated and sharpened all his senses. He recalled Dr. Johnson's
remark that he would be content to spend his life driving in a
postchaise with a pretty woman. But the pretty woman would not have been
driving. This girl was driving. She profoundly knew the job. Evelyn
always had a special admiration for anybody who profoundly knew the job.
She even knew the streets of commercial and industrial London. Before he
was aware of it, the oddest thoughts shot through his mind.
"Her father might object. But I could handle her father. Besides--what a
girl! Lovely, and can do something! No one who drives like her could
possibly _not_ have the stuff in her. I've never met anybody like her.
She likes me. No nonsense about her! What a voice! Her voice is enough.
It's like a blooming orchestra, soft and soothing, but so.... Here!
What's this? What's all this. It isn't an hour since I met her. I'm the
wildest idiot ever born. Marriage? Never. A mistress? Impossible.
Neither she nor any other woman. The head of a 'show,' as she calls it,
like mine with a mistress!"
He laughed inwardly, awaking out of a dream. And as he awoke he heard
her beautiful voice saying, while her eyes stared straight ahead:
"What I admire in you is that you don't _act_. I know you must be a
pretty biggish sort of a man. Well, father's pretty big--at least I'm
always being told so--but father can't help acting the big man, acting
what he _is_. He's always feeling what he is. You're big and so you must
know you're big; but you just let it alone. It doesn't worry you into
acting the part. I know. I've seen lots of big men."
"Oh!" murmured Evelyn, cautious, non-committal, and short of the right
words. But he was thinking rapidly again: "And _she_ hadn't met _me_ an
hour ago! What a girl! No girl ever said anything as extraordinary as
what she's just said. And it's true, what she says. Didn't I see it in
her father? I was afraid I might have seemed boastful, the way I talked
about me and my 'show.' But apparently she didn't misunderstand me. Most
girls would have misunderstood. Really she is a bit out of the
ordinary."
Smithfield Markets with their enclosed lighted avenues shone out
twinkling in the near distance, on the other side of a large, dark,
irregular open space of ground. Gracie glanced to right and left,
decided where she would draw up, and, describing a long, evenly
sustained curve, drew up in a quiet corner, slow, slower,
slowest--motion expiring without a jar into immobility. She clicked the
door and jumped down with not a trace of fatigue after a bedless night
nearly ended. Her tongue said nothing, but her demeanour said: "And
that's that! That's how I do it!"
"Well," remarked Evelyn, still in the car. "You said something about me.
I'll say something about you. You can drive a car."
Gracie answered: "I don't drive any more."
"What do you mean--you don't drive any more?"
"I mean race-track driving. I've given it up. _This_ isn't driving."
"Had an accident?"
"An accident? No! I've never touched a thing in my life. But I might
have done. I thought it wasn't good enough--the risk. So I gave it up. I
thought I might as well keep the slate clean." She smiled ingenuously,
smoothing her cloak.
"And what a slate! What a nerve to retire like that!" Evelyn reflected,
and said aloud: "You're amazing!" He had again the sensation of the
romantic quality of life. He was uplifted high.
"So here we are," said Gracie, suddenly matter-of-fact.
A policeman strolled into the vicinity.
"Can I leave my car here, officer?" she questioned him briskly,
authoritatively.
The policeman paused, peering at her in the dying night.
"Yes, miss."
"It'll be quite safe?"
"I'll keep an eye on it, miss."
"Thank you."
Evelyn, accustomed to take charge of all interviews, parleys, and
pow-wows, had to be a silent spectator. As he led her into the Market,
he trembled at the prospect of the excitement, secret and overt, which
her appearance would cause there.
CHAPTER V
GRACIE AT SMITHFIELD
I
Gracie, though for different reasons, felt perhaps just as nervous as
Evelyn himself when they entered the meat-market; but within the first
few moments her nervousness was utterly dissolved away in the strong
sense of romance which surged into her mind and destroyed everything
else therein.
The illimitable interior had four chief colours: bright blue of the
painted constructional ironwork, all columns and arches;
red-pink-ivories of meat; white of the salesmen's long coats; and yellow
of electricity. Hundreds of bays, which might or might not be called
shops, lined with thousands of great steel hooks from each of which hung
a carcass, salesmen standing at the front of every bay, and far at the
back of every bay a sort of shanty-office in which lurked, crouching and
peering forth, clerks pen in hand, like devilish accountants of some
glittering, chill inferno.
One long avenue of bays stretched endless in front, and others on either
hand, producing in the stranger a feeling of infinity. Many people in
the avenues, loitering, chatting, chaffing, bickering! And at frequent
intervals market-porters bearing carcasses on their leather-protected
shoulders, or porters pushing trucks full of carcasses, sped with bent
heads feverishly through the avenues, careless of whom they might throw
down or maim or kill. An impression of intense, cheerful vitality,
contrasting dramatically with the dark somnolence of the streets around!
A dream, a vast magic, set in the midst of the prosaic reality of
industrial sleep! You were dead; you stepped at one step into the dream;
you were alive.
Everything was incredibly clean. The blue paint was shining clean; the
carcasses were clean; the white coats of the salesmen were clean; the
chins of the salesmen were clean and smooth; many of them showed white,
starched collars and fancy neckties under the white coats. Very many of
them had magnificent figures, tall, burly, immense, healthy, jolly. None
of them had any air of fatigue or drowsiness or unusualness. The hour
was twenty minutes to five, and all was as customary as the pavements of
Bond Street at twenty minutes to noon. And the badinage between
acquaintances, between buyers and sellers, was more picturesque than
that of Bond Street. Gracie caught fragments as she passed. "You dirty
old tea-leaf." "Go _on_, you son of an unmarried woman."
Gracie was delighted. A world of males, of enormous and solid males. She
was the only woman in the prodigious, jostling market. A million males,
and one girl. She savoured the contrast between the one and the million,
belittling neither. Of course Evelyn and she were marked for inquisition
by curious, glinting eyes. They puzzled curiosity. They ought to have
been revellers, out to see the night-life of London. But the sedate,
reserved Evelyn looked no reveller, nor did she in her simple, dark
cloak. But, she thought, they knew a thing or two, did those males! With
satisfaction she imagined the free imaginings behind their eyes. She was
proud to be the one against the million. Let them think! Let their
imaginations work! She felt her power. And never, not even at 100 m.p.h.
on the race-track, had she lived more exultantly. She was always
demanding life, and seldom getting it. Now she was getting it--the full
cup and overflowing.
II
Withal, at a deeper level than these Dionysiac sensations, was a
sensation nobler, which rose up through them. The desire for serious
endeavour. At the wheel of a racing-car, built specially for her to her
father's order, Gracie had been conscious of a purpose, of a
justification. The track involved an austere rule of life; abstinence,
regularity, early hours, the care of nerves, bodily fitness. Eight or
ten months ago she had exhausted the moral potentialities of racing.
Racing held nothing more for her. She had tired of it as a traveller
tires of an island, once unknown, which he has explored from end to end.
She had abandoned it. Her father had said: "You can't stick to
anything." But her father did not understand.
She had fallen into sloth and self-indulgence, aimless, restless,
unhappy. Her formidable engine-power was wasting itself. She had
rejoined her smart friends, formed the habit of never wanting to go to
bed and never wanting to get up, scattered her father's incalculable
affluence with both hands, eaten, drunk, gambled, refused herself no
fantastic luxury (Sir Henry being negligently, perhaps cynically,
compliant), lived the life furiously. And the life was death. Against
his inclination, her father had taken her with him to America. She had
had hopes of the opportunities and the energy of America. They were
frustrated. In New York she had lived the life still more furiously. And
it was worse than death. While in New York Sir Henry had put through one
of his favourite transactions: sold his splendid London house at a rich
profit. He had a fondness for selling London homes over the heads of
himself and Gracie. He had two country-houses; but the country meant
little to Gracie, and less to him. Hence, this night, the hotel. The man
would reside in hotels for months together.
Gracie had reached the hotel, in the middle of the night, without any
clear purpose in mind. She had loved with violence more than once, but
never wisely. She now had no attachment--and only one interest: reading.
She had suddenly discovered reading. Shakspere had enthralled her. On
the Atlantic voyage she had gulped down two plays of Shakspere a day. At
present, for her, it was Shakspere or nothing. The phenomenon was beyond
her father; but it flattered his paternal vanity, demonstrated to him
that he had begotten no common child. First racing, now Shakspere!
Something Homeric about Gracie, and she his daughter! Out of Shakspere
and other special reading, a project was beginning to shape in the
girl's soul, as nebulæ coalesce into a star. But it was yet too vague to
be formulated. Then the hotel. Then Evelyn Orcham, whose name Sir Henry
had casually mentioned to her with candid respect. Then the prospect of
fabled Smithfield before dawn. Evelyn had impressed her at the first
glance: she did not know why. And she divined that she in turn had
impressed him. She admired him the more because he had not leapt at her
suggestion of going with him to Smithfield, because for a few moments he
had shown obvious reluctance to accept it. Not a man to be swept off his
feet. A self-contained, reserved man. Shy. Quiet. Almost taciturn, with
transient moods of being confidential, intimate. Mysterious. Dangerous,
beneath a conventional deportment. You never knew what might be hidden
in the depths of a man like that. Enigmatic. Diffident; but very sure of
himself. In short... was he married? Had he a hinterland? Well, his
eyes didn't look as if he had.
And now she was in Smithfield, and her prophetic vision of it, her hopes
of it, had been right. Smithfield had not deceived her. A romantic
microcosm of mighty males, with a redoubtable language of their own. A
rude, primeval, clean, tonic microcosm, where work was fierce and
impassioned. A microcosm where people _got up early and thought nothing
of getting up early_, and strove and haggled and sweated, rejoicing in
the purchase and sale of beef and mutton and pork. To get up early and
strive, while the dull world was still asleep: this it was that appealed
to Gracie. Freshness and sanity of earliest dark cool mornings! She
wanted to bathe in Smithfield as in a bath, to drench herself in it, to
yield utterly to it. Smithfield was paradise, and a glorious hell.
CHAPTER VI
BIRTH OF DAY
I
"Ah! There's Cradock," said Evelyn. "He's our buyer. I'll introduce him
to you. The little man there. The one that's sticking a skewer into that
lamb."
Gracie recognised the man who had been waiting in the great hall of the
hotel. Having stuck the skewer into the carcass, Jack pulled it out and
put it to his nose. Then, while Evelyn and Gracie watched, he stuck a
skewer into the next lamb, and finally left a skewer in each lamb: sign
that they were his chosen.
"Chines and ends," Gracie heard him say, as he scribbled in a notebook.
He saw Evelyn.
"Here we are, Cradock," said Evelyn. "This is Miss Savott. Knows all
about motor-racing. Now she wants to know all about Smithfield."
Jack clasped her slim hand in his thick one.
"I do think your market is marvellous, Mr. Cradock!" Gracie greeted him,
genuine enthusiasm in her emotional low voice. Her clasp tightened on
the thick hand, and held it.
"Glad to meet you, miss."
"It's so big and so clean. I love this blue paint."
"Glad to hear that, miss. There's some of 'em would sooner have the old
green... a bit of it over there." He pointed.
"That's nice too. But I prefer the blue, myself."
Jack was conquered at once, not by her views on blue and green paint,
but by her honest manner, by her beauty, and by the warmth of her
trifling, fragile, firm fingers. He thought, "Governor knows what's
what. Trust him!" And since the relations of men and women are
essentially the same in all classes, and his ideas concerning them had
been made robust and magnanimous by many contacts with meat-salesmen of
terrific physique, he began privately to wish the governor well in
whatever the governor might be about. Anyhow it was none of his
business, and the governor could indeed be trusted, had nothing to
learn.
"You see those lambs, sir," he murmured. "I guarantee there isn't ten
lambs like them in all London to-day!"
Evelyn nodded. The carcasses were already lifted off their hooks. Gracie
saw them put on a huge carving block, and watched a carver in bloody
blue divide them with a long razor-knife and a saw. In a moment the
operation was performed, and so delicately and elegantly that it had no
repulsiveness. The carvers were finished surgeons for Gracie, not
butchers.
"That's got to be served for lunch at the hotel this morning," said Jack
to her. "We hang the beef for five or six days--used to hang it for
twelve or fourteen. But you ladies and gentlemen alter your tastes, you
see, miss, and we have to follow. You see all that calves' liver there.
Not so many years ago, I could buy as much as I wanted at sixpence a
pound. Would you believe me, it costs me two shillings these days! All
because them Harley Street doctors say it's good for anæmia." He turned
to Evelyn: "That's Charlie Jebson, governor. Next door." He jerked his
head.
"Let's go and talk to him," said Evelyn, easily.
Mr. Charles Jebson was a very tall man, with a good figure, and
dandiacal in dress.
"This is my governor, Mr. Orcham, Charlie. And this is Miss Savott, come
to see what we do up here. Mr. Charles Jebson."
Charles became exceedingly deferential. He shook hands with Gracie like
a young peer in swallow-tails determined to ingratiate himself with a
chorus-girl. Gracie smiled to herself, thinking: "What a dance I could
lead him!"
"You do get up early here, Mr. Jebson," she said. "When do you sleep?"
"I don't, miss," he replied, smirking. "At least--well, three or four
hours. Make it up Sundays. Perhaps you know the 'Shaftesbury,' in
Shaftesbury Avenue. Express lunch and supper counter. That's mine. They
call me 'the governor' there, when I go in of a night to tackle the
books and keep an eye on things. Not so much time for sleep, you'll
freely admit." Gracie's notion of him was enlarged. White coat before
dawn. Restaurateur in the centre of theatre-land at supper-time! A
romantic world!
"It's all too marvellous!" she said admiringly.
Charlie showed pride. A procession of four laden porters charged blindly
down the avenue, shouting. Gracie received a glancing blow on the
shoulder. She spun round, laughing. Jack moved her paternally away to
shelter. A nun, hands joined in front, eyes downcast, walked sedately
along the avenue, a strange, exotic visitant from another sphere. The
spectacle startled Gracie, shaking all her ideals, somehow shaming her.
"Why is she here?" she demanded of Jack with false casualness.
"I couldn't say, miss, for sure. Little Sister of the Poor, or
something. Come for what she can get. Food for orphans, I shouldn't be
surprised. They're very generous in the Market." He added discreetly, as
Gracie made as if to return to Evelyn, "Governor's got a bit of business
with Mr. Jebson."
"Oh yes." And she asked him some questions about what she saw.
"Refrigerators," he said. "Thirty years ago when I first came here there
wasn't an ice-box in the place."
Gracie could overhear parts of the conversation between Charlie and
Evelyn. Evelyn laughed faintly. Charlie laughed loudly. It went on.
"I hope we shall be able to continue to do business together, Mr.
Jebson," Evelyn said at length.
"It won't be my fault if we don't, sir," Charlie deferentially replied.
"That's good," said Evelyn. "I know there's no beef better than yours. I
didn't know you had a restaurant. I've often noticed the Shaftesbury.
One night I shall come in. I'm rather interested in restaurants." He
laughed.
"Thank _you_, sir. It'll be a great honour when you do."
General handshaking, which left Charlie Jebson well satisfied with the
scheme of the universe. The three proceeded along the avenue.
II
"That'll be all right now, I think," Gracie heard Evelyn murmur to Jack
Cradock. And she recalled what Evelyn had said to her about an instinct
for handling people. As it was extremely difficult to walk three abreast
in the thronged avenues, Jack, now elated, walked ahead. But sometimes
he lagged behind. Everybody knew him. Everybody addressed him as Jack.
(The Smithfield world was as much a world of Christian names as Gracie's
own.) Nevertheless the affectionate familiarity towards Jack was masked
by the respect due to a man who was incapable of being deceived as to
the quality of a carcass, who represented the swellest hotel in London,
who had a clerk, who spent an average of a hundred pounds sterling a
day, and who would take nothing but the best.
Cradock stopped dead, in the rear.
"Hello, Jim. I want a hundred pounds of fat."
"Two and four," was the reply.
"That's where you're wrong. Two shillings."
"And that's where _you_'re wrong."
"Two and two," said Jack.
"Oh," said Jim, with feigned disgust. "I'll give it you for your
birthday. I know how hard up you are."
Jack scribbled in his book and strode after the waiting pair. But a
heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Hello, Jack. Not seen you lately. Had a fair holiday?"
"Yes," said Cradock. "I have had a _fair_ holiday. I'm not like some of
you chaps. When I go for a holiday I take my wife." He hurried on.
"Excuse me, miss," he apologised to Gracie.
The trio arrived at a large fenced lift.
"Miss Savott might like to go down," Evelyn suggested.
Cradock spoke to the guardian, and the chains were unfastened.
"If you'll excuse me, governor. I'll see you afterwards." And to Gracie,
with a grin: "I've got a bit to do, and time's getting on. If I don't
keep two ton o' meat in stock down at the Imperial Palace the governor
would pass me a remark." With a smile kindly and sardonic, benevolent
and yet reserved, Jack Cradock stood at the edge of the deep well as the
rough platform, slowly descending, carried the governor and young lady
beyond his sight.
"What a lovely man!" said Gracie, appreciative.
"You heard that phrase in America!" was Evelyn's comment.
They smiled at one another. The hubbub and brightness of the vast market
vanished away above their heads. The lift shuddered and stopped. They
were in silence and gloom. They were in a crypt. And the crypt was a
railway station, vaster even than the Market, and seeming still vaster
than it was by reason of the lowness of its roof.
"As big?" said the lift-attendant disdainfully in response to an
enquiry. "It's a lot bigger than Euston _or_ St. Pancras _or_ King's
Cross. If you ask me, it's the longest station in London.... No, the
meat trains are all come and gone an hour ago." An engine puffed slowly
in the further obscure twilight. "No, that's only some empties."
Vague, dull sounds echoed under the roof: waggons being hauled to and
fro by power-winches, waggons swinging round on turn-tables. Men like
pigmies dotted the endless slatternly expanse. The untidy platforms were
littered with packages: a crate of live fowls, a case of dead rabbits, a
pile of tarpaulins. The pair walked side by side along a platform until
they were held up by a chasm through which a waggon was being dragged by
a hawser. When the chasm was covered again they walked on, right to the
Aldersgate end of the station, whence the Farringdon Road end was
completely invisible in the gloom. Neither spoke. Both were
self-conscious.
"What are you thinking about?" Gracie asked curtly.
"If you want to know, I was thinking about that split ship of yours. And
you?"
Gracie's low, varied voice wavered as she replied:
"I was only thinking of those lambs, when they were in the fields,
wagging their silly little tails while they sucked milk in."
Evelyn saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. He offered no remark.
Nervously Gracie pulled her cloak off and put it on her arm.
"It's so hot. I mean I'm so hot," she said.
She had indeed for a moment thought of the lambs. But the abiding
sensation in her mind, in her heart and soul, was the sensation of the
forlorn sadness of the deserted dark crypt, called by the unimaginative
a railway station, and of the bright, jostling back-chatting world of
men suspended over it on a magical system of steel girders. All the
accomplishment of adventurous and determined laborious men--men whom her
smart girl friends would not look twice at, because of the cut of their
coats, or their accent, or their social deportment! She wanted ardently
to be a man among men; she felt that she was capable of being a man
among men. Her ideals, shaken before, were thrown down and smashed. She
liked Evelyn for his sympathetic silence. She persuaded herself that he
knew all her thoughts. By a shameless secret act, she tried to strip her
mind to him, tear off every rag of decency, expose it to him, nude. And
not a word said.
"Ah!" she reflected with a yearning. "His instinct for handling people!
Could he handle me? Could he handle me?"...
When they regained the surface, Jack Cradock was waiting for them. She
was astounded to see by the market-clocks that the hour was after
half-past six. Then something disturbingly went out. A whole row of
electric lights in the broad arched roof of the central avenue! New
shadows took the place of the old. She glanced at the roof. Grey light
showed through its glass. Dawn had begun. Never in Gracie's experience
was a dawn so mysterious, so disconcerting, so heartrending. Jack
Cradock was very amiable, respectful, self-respecting, and
matter-of-fact.
Outside she resumed her dark cloak, tipped the policeman before Evelyn
could do so, and slowly climbed into the car. She drove to the hotel
slowly, not because of the increased traffic in the lightening streets,
but as it were meditatively.
"I might write down my impressions of all that," she murmured to Evelyn
once, half-emerging for an instant from her meditation.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOTEL WAKING UP
I
In the courtyard of the hotel a lorry loaded with luggage was grinding
and pulsating its way out. The courtyard had dried after its morning
souse.
"That's the last of the big luggage for the 'Leviathan,'" Evelyn
explained, as Gracie brought the car to a standstill in front of the
revolving doors and the two janissaries. "Special train leaves Waterloo
at 8.20. Passengers hate to have to catch it, but they always do manage
to catch it--somehow."
Gracie made no reply. A chauffeur, who had been leaning against the rail
of the luggage-hoist in a corner of the yard, advanced towards the car.
"Good morning, Compton," Gracie greeted him, as she followed Evelyn out
of the car. "How long have you been here?"
"About an hour, miss."
"Have you had the big stuff sent upstairs?"
"Oh yes, miss."
"There's the beginning of a rattle in the bonnet here. Have a look at
it."
"Yes, miss. Certainly, miss. Any orders, miss?"
"Not to-day. But I don't know about Sir Henry."
"No, miss."
"Better put the car in the hotel garage, and tell them to clean her. If
I want her I'll get her out myself. I'm going to bed. You ought to get
some sleep, too."
"Very good, miss."
In her beautiful voice Evelyn noticed the nonchalance of fatigue. He was
glad she was tired, just as earlier he was glad she had not been tired.
On the steps under the marquise she took off her cloak; then preceded
Evelyn to the spinning doors.
"There's something at the back of your left shoulder," said Evelyn, in
the doorway.
"What?" She did not turn round.
"A stain. Why! It's blood."
"Blood?"
"Yes. You must have got it after we came up into the Market again. You
weren't wearing your cloak then. You were wearing it before. And you
couldn't have got it down in the station."
"What a detective you are!" she said, still not turning round.
Evelyn saw a deep flush gradually suffuse her neck. How sensitive she
was! No doubt she hated the thought of blood on her frock.
"The valet will take it out for you, if your maid can't. They're very
good at that, our valets are."
"At getting out blood-stains?"
"Any stains." Evelyn gave one of his short laughs, though her tone had
rather disturbed him. The blood-stain was obscene upon her. He hated it.
She glanced back, not at Evelyn, but at the janissaries, who,
well-trained, averted their eyes. He wished that she would put on her
cloak again, and in the same instant she put it on, while her bag
slapped against her corsage. Then she entered. On the outer mahogany of
the head-porter's desk hung a framed card: "s.s. Leviathan. The special
boat-train will leave Waterloo at 8.20 a.m.," followed by the date.
"How many departures by the 'Leviathan' this morning, Sam?" Evelyn
asked. Long Sam was half-hidden within his lair.
"Eighteen, sir," said Sam, consulting a book that lay open on the desk.
"Hm!"
The great hall had much the same nocturnal aspect as when they had left
it, but with a new touch of lugubriousness, and a more intense
expectancy--expectancy of the day, impatient now and restless. Day had
begun in the streets and roads and in St. James's Park, but not in the
hall. The fireman was handing to Reyer his time-clock, which checked the
performance of his duties more exactly and ruthlessly than any overseer
could have done. Reyer, comatose and pale from endless hours of tedium,
accepted it negligently.
A high pile of morning newspapers lay on the counter near the
still-closed book-and-news shop. Evelyn strode eagerly towards it, and
examined paper after paper.
"Not a word," he called to Gracie.
"Not a word about what?"
"Your split ship. I looked at the posters in Fleet Street. Nothing on
them. Of course there wouldn't be. Terrific thing, and yet they can hush
it up. And there isn't a newspaper office in London that doesn't know
all about it by this time. And you'll see it won't be in the evening
papers either."
Gracie, standing hesitant, said nothing. She was too weary, or too
depressed, to be interested any more, even in her complexion. Reaction!
But Evelyn felt no fatigue. His imagination was now no longer
responsively awake to the fatigue of Gracie. On the contrary he felt
extraordinarily alive.
"See," he said, pointing through glass walls to the grill-room, where a
couple of men, attended by two waiters, were already breakfasting, "my
hotel's waking up for the day. You're just in time to see my hotel
waking up. It's a great moment."
He loved to watch his hotel waking up. Something dramatic, poignant, in
the spectacle of the tremendous monster stirring out of its uneasy
slumber.
A youngish woman in a short black frock approached through the dark
vista of the restaurant and the foyer. She tripped vivaciously up the
first flight of steps, then up the second. She entered the hall.
"Good morning, Miss Maclaren."
"Good morning, sir." Bright Scottish accent, but serious.
"Housekeeper," he murmured to Gracie. "That is to say, one of our
housekeepers. We have eight, not counting the head-housekeeper, who's
the mother of us all." Affection in his eager voice.
Gracie stared and said nothing.
"Isn't Miss Brury on duty to-day, Miss Maclaren?" he continued.
"She's unwell, sir."
"Sorry to hear that. Things are a bit late this morning."
"Yes, sir. Something wrong with the clocking apparatus. Turnstile
wouldn't turn. Mr. Maxon couldn't explain it, but he got it put right."
"Everyone except heads of departments has to clock in," Evelyn explained
to Gracie. "Thirteen hundred of 'em, not counting the Laundry and the
works department--outside."
"What a swarm!" Gracie spoke at last; there was no answering enthusiasm
in her tone, but Evelyn was not dashed. He had forgotten the split ship
and the blood-stain. He was the creative artist surveying and displaying
his creation--the hotel. He was like a youth.
A procession of girls and women followed Miss Maclaren through the vista
of the restaurant and the foyer into the great hall. They wore a blue
uniform with brown apron, and carried pails, brooms, brushes and
dusters. Some of them swerved off into the corridor leading towards the
grill-room. Others began to dust the Enquiries and Reception counters.
Others were soon on their knees, in formation, cleaning the immense
floor of the hall. Miss Maclaren spoke sharply, curtly, now and then to
one or other of them.
"You always have to be _at_ them, but they're a very decent lot," she
murmured as it were apologetically to Evelyn, her hands folded in front
of her, nun-like, while surreptitiously she summed up Gracie with
hostility.
"Yes," thought Evelyn, enjoying the scene as though he had never
witnessed it before. "The women-guests are fast asleep on their private
embroidered pillows upstairs, all in silk pyjamas and nighties, and
these women here have cleaned their homes and got breakfasts and washed
children and been sworn at probably, some of them, and walked a mile or
two through the streets, and put on their overalls, and here they are
swilling and dusting like the devil!" And aloud he said to Gracie: "Come
and see the restaurant. Won't take a moment."
They went down steps and down steps. (The earth's surface was level
beneath, but the front part of the hotel had been built over a basement;
the back part had not.) One lamp still kept watch over the main part of
the dead restaurant; but in a far corner was another lamp, and beneath
it a fat man was furiously cleaning about a thousand electroplated
cruets. Rows of cruets. Trays of cruets. Beyond, a corridor leading to
the ball-room in the West Wing.
"Yes," said Gracie feebly.
They returned.
"Here's the ladies' cloak-room," said Evelyn, even more animated, and
turned aside.
He took her arm and led her in. Room after room. Table after table.
Chair after chair. Mirror after mirror. Clock after fancy clock. In the
dim twilight of rare lamps the long suite of highly decorated apartments
looked larger even than it was. A woman was polishing a mirror.
"It's a wonderful place," said Gracie politely. "I think I must go to
bed, though."
He escorted her to the lift. Leaving the liftman to wait, she stood back
from the ornate cage--such a contrast with the shuddering wooden
platform at Smithfield--and glancing up at Evelyn, her eyes and face
suddenly as shining and vivacious as his, she said to him in her richest
voice, low, emotional, teasing:
"Do you know what you are?"
"What am I?"
"You're a perfect child with a toy!"
What would his co-directors, the heads of departments, the
head-housekeeper, Jack Cradock, have thought, to hear him thus
familiarly and intimately addressed by a smart chit who was also a
stranger?
"Am I? I do believe I am," he answered, enraptured.
II
But when the lift had taken her up out of sight, he thought, though
lightly: "Who does she think she is, cheeking me, after inviting herself
to Smithfield and all that? Never saw her in my life until this morning,
and she has the nerve to call me a child!" Nevertheless, her impudent
remark did please him. He indeed admitted, proudly, that he was a
child--one part of him, which part had carelessly forgotten to grow up.
The mishap with the turnstiles was prominent in his mind. The
organisation of the hotel was divided into some thirty departments, and
the head of each had a fixed conviction that his department was the
corner-stone of the success of the hotel. Evelyn, Machiavellian,
impartially supported every one of these convictions, just as he
consistently refrained from discouraging the weed of interdepartmental
jealousies inevitably sprouting from time to time in the soil of
strenuous emulation which he was always fertilising. Thus the head
floors-waiter did not conceal his belief that the room-service was the
basis of prosperity; the restaurant-manager _knew_ that the restaurant
was the life-blood of the place; the manager of the grill-room was not
less sure that the grill, where at lunch and at supper the number of
celebrities and notorieties far surpassed that of the restaurant (though
it cost the hotel not a penny for bands), was the chief factor of
prosperity; the audit-manager was aware that without his department the
hotel would go to hell in six months; the bills-manager had no need to
emphasise his supremacy; the head of the Reception, who could draw from
memory a plan of every room with every piece of furniture in it, and who
knew by sight and name and number every guest, and had a file-record of
every guest, including the dubious, with particulars of his sojourns,
desires, eccentricities, rate of spending, payments--even to dishonoured
cheques, who could be welcoming, non-committal, cool, cold and ever
tactful in five languages--this marvel had never a doubt as to the
identity of the one indispensable individual in the hierarchy of the
hotel. And so on.
And there were others--especially those mightinesses the French, Italian
and Viennese chefs. Evelyn always remembered the ingenuous, sincere
remark of the chief engineer, who passed his existence in the lower
entrails of our revolving planet, where daylight was utterly unknown.
"You see those things," the chief engineer had said to a visitor. "If
they shut up, the blessed hotel would have to shut right up." 'Those
things' were the boilers, which made the steam, which actuated the
engines, which drew the water from the artesian wells, made the electric
light and the electric power, heated the halls, restaurants and rooms,
froze or chilled perishable food, baked the bread, cooked the meat,
boiled the vegetables, cleansed and dried the very air, did everything
except roast the game over a wood fire.
Evelyn had admitted, to himself, the claim to pre-eminence of the chief
engineer. But now he began to wonder whether the turnstile and
clocking-in satrap was not entitled to precedence over even the chief
engineer. For if the hotel depended on the engine-hall the engine-hall
depended on the presence of its workmen. He smiled at the fanciful
thought as he descended by tiled and concrete slopes and narrow iron
staircases, glimpsing non-uniformed humble toilers of both sexes in
soiled, airless rooms and enclosures, towards the cave of the
staff-manager's second-in-command who watched and permitted or forbade
the entrances and exits of thirteen hundred employees.
The cave was a room of irregular shape, full of machines and
pigeon-holes and cognate phenomena. The second-in-command, a dignified
and authoritative specimen of the middle-class aged fifty or so, sat on
one side of a counter. On the other side stood a young woman starting on
her day out, dressed and hatted and shod and powdered and rouged for the
undoing or delight of some young male: in her working-hours a
chambermaid. Between them, on the counter, lay a despatch-case, on which
the girl kept a gloved hand.
"You can't leave with that thing until I've seen inside it," said
authority.
"But why? It's mine."
"How long have you been here? Not long, eh?"
"A month."
"Well, when you've been here a month of Sundays you'll have got into
your head that nobody can take anything out of here without me seeing
what it is."
"I call it a wicked shame."
"It may be. But it's the rule of the hotel. Last year I caught a girl
slipping out with a pair of sheets where they oughtn't to be."
"This despatch-case won't hold a pair of sheets," said the girl. "Anyone
can see that."
Authority made no reply, but glanced inquisitively at a small group of
men who were clocking in. The girl sulkily opened the despatch-case.
Authority looked into it.
"That necklace yours?"
"Yes."
"Where did you get it from?"
"A lady gave it me."
"What floor? What number? What name? Is she still here?"
Question and answer; question and answer.
"Off you go," said authority, having written down the details on the
slip-permit which the girl had handed to him: "You'll know next time."
Off the girl went, haughtily. Evelyn felt sorry for her, as he emerged
from the doorway where he had been listening to the encounter.
"Good _morning_, sir." Authority had suddenly changed to subservience.
"I hear you had some trouble with the turnstiles this morning, Maxon,"
said Evelyn benevolently.
"Trouble, sir? Turnstiles?" replied subservience, as if quite at a loss
to understand the sinister allusion.
"Yes. Some charwomen were kept waiting."
"Oh! I see what you mean, sir. That wasn't _turn_stiles, sir. They've
told you wrong. I'll show you what it was." Subservience sprang round
the counter.
The two bent together over a steel contraption, and subservience
explained.
"No _turn_stiles about that, sir. Clocking."
"Why didn't you let 'em through, for once?" Evelyn asked.
"Well, sir, I thought I should get it right every minute. Only a touch.
And it wasn't long. It wasn't above five minutes. And it won't happen
again. And if it does happen again, and it's your wish, sir----"
Evelyn changed the subject. After some general chat, whose sole object
was to indicate to the excellent Maxon that Maxon enjoyed his special
regard, he departed, having first jotted a reminding note for himself.
The rule about outgoing packages irked his feeling for decency. But it
was absolutely necessary. There was simply no end to the running of a
hotel. How would Gracie Savott have behaved if confronted with the rule?
A certain liveliness for authority! She was getting into bed now.
Nothing had been said as to a further meeting.
III
When Evelyn returned to the great hall Monsieur Adolphe, the perfectly
attired, rosy-cheeked Reception-manager, who was an Alsatian but who had
submerged the characteristics of his origin under a cosmopolitanism
acquired during twenty-five years of activity in continental and London
hotels, was hurrying busily about; for the "Leviathan" departures had
begun.
American women, with the drawn, set faces of too-early rising, and great
bouquets of flowers, were appearing, followed by placatory men who
desired tranquillity even at the price of honour. If husbands and
fathers suffered unjustly from wives and daughters, the injustice was at
once passed on by husbands and fathers to baggage-porters and other
officials. Adolphe's rôle was to establish an illusion of general
loving-kindness. He fulfilled it: that was his life-work. But Evelyn
stood always first in his mind, and for Evelyn's sake he cut short the
oration of a Chicago millionaire.
"Sir Henry Savott has just telephoned down to enquire what time it would
be convenient for you to see him to-day, sir. I've sent the message up
to your room."
"Why did the message come to you, Adolphe?"
"I suppose because you'd been seen once or twice in the hall, and you
weren't in your rooms. Excuse me, sir." Adolphe hastened away into the
courtyard, half running.
Day had at length dawned in the great hall, which lived again, after the
coma of the interminable night.
"If that fellow Savott really is Napoleon," Evelyn reflected, "he ought
to be fast asleep now, instead of pursuing me with telephone-messages
that take everything for granted. How does he know that I've not gone to
bed same as he has?" He smiled in anticipation of protracted, fierce,
and yet delicately manoeuvred tussles with Savott. The fight for and
against the rumoured hotel-merger was going to start sooner than he had
expected. He smiled a second time, because he had firm hold of something
that Sir Henry passionately wanted. Great fun! He reflected further:
"It'll do that fellow no harm to cool his heels for a day or two."
Then he went to the counter, and wrote a reply to Sir Henry: "Mr. Orcham
is very sorry to say that he has outside appointments which will keep
him away from the hotel all day." Nothing about to-morrow or the next
day? No. More effective to say nothing about to-morrow or the next day.
He had the goods, and delay and uncertainty would only inflame the
desirer and so impair the desirer's skill in negotiation.
"What number--Sir Henry Savott?" he demanded, looking up across the
counter at a clerk. "Page!" he called. "Telephone. Sir Henry Savott,
365."
Adolphe came in hurrying, explaining with a laugh: "I had to give
Senator Gooden an extra shake of the hand because he came to us from
another hotel, and I don't want him to go back there ever."
"Good," said Evelyn. "I've seen to Sir Henry Savott. You know nothing."
"Quite, sir," said Adolphe comprehendingly, and dashed off.
Car after car was now leaving the courtyard for Waterloo. Mowlem, the
day head-porter, was at his grandest at the revolving doors. Evelyn
ascended, and, looking at his watch, entered his private apartments.
7.45. At 7.45 he breakfasted. There, on the centre-table in the
sitting-room, was his breakfast, with the newspapers arranged in what
Evelyn had decided was the order of their importance to him. There, on
the buffet, the spirit-lamp burned under a silver dish. There, near the
door, stood his own man, with a smile of greeting. Evelyn shut the door
on the whole world. He had half-an-hour to himself. No mail was ever
brought to his rooms. Telephoning was harshly discouraged. Punctuality.
Everything in its place. All the angles were right-angles. A logical
orderliness. No will but his own functioned in those two rooms. He sat
down, sipped at iced water, opened a newspaper, cleared his throat,
stretched his legs, tore up the now answered telephone-message from Sir
Henry Savott.
"All right, Oldham," he gave the signal. "Bit colder this morning, eh?
Autumn." His voice was full of happy kindliness.
"Yes, sir," Oldham agreed, content, and with ceremonious gestures served
the bacon and poured out the Costa Rica coffee.
Fresh rolls. Fresh toast. Piles of butter on ice. It was heaven, a
heavenly retreat.
"I'll shave after breakfast, Oldham."
"Yes, sir. I have put out the things."
"Good."
Evelyn was secure and at ease. He had many matters on his mind: the
clocking-in; the chambermaid--no insult intended; Sir Henry Savott; the
relations between Jack Cradock and Charlie Jebson; a hundred others big
and little. But they did not trouble him, because he knew he could deal
with them all. He loved them. He needed them. They exhilarated him. They
were his life. Without them he would have sunk into tedium. His life was
perfect. Nobody could interfere with it, nobody disarrange it.
And then the tiny thought sneaked into his mind on tip-toe like a thief:
was his life perfect? Yes! It was perfect. And it was full. Was it full?
Was no corner of it empty? Did nothing lack? Yes! No! His life lacked
nothing. It was balanced. Its equilibrium was stable. Supposing a woman,
a beautiful woman, came into that sacrosanct room, as of right,
flaunting her right, and began fussing about his health, commenting on
his pallor, demanding to look at his tongue, fussing about the flowers
and the exact disposition of the flowers, opening a newspaper and
leaving it inside out on the floor, complaining of her loneliness in the
world, complaining of her dressmaker, asking him whether he thought she
looked five years younger than her real age, and, having been answered
in the affirmative, asking him whether he _really_ thought she looked
five years younger than her real age; asking him whether he loved her,
suggesting that he was disappointed in her! And so on and so on.
He knew it all. He had 'been there.' Intolerable! Delicious at rare
moments, hell the rest of the time! His life was full. Another drop, and
the glass would splash over. He had for years been lightly dreaming of a
mistress. Silly! Boyish! A mistress would be a liability, not an asset.
His career came first, with his usefulness to society, his duty to
shareholders. He was a serious man with a conscience, not a gambler;
commerce with women was the equivalent of gambling; it was staking
tranquillity of conscience, staking his very soul, against a smile, a
kiss, an embrace, the elegance of frocks and jewels. He opened a paper,
gazed at the lines of type, and, engaged secretly in the controversy
which beyond all others has agitated ambitious and powerful men for
thousands of years and never been satisfactorily settled, he could make
absolutely no sense of the news. Suddenly it occurred to him that Sir
Henry might be wanting to see him, not about the scheme for a merger,
but about his excursion with Gracie Savott into the wilds of London in
the middle of the night. The girl might have wakened and told her
father.
"Another slice, sir?"
"I think I will. I was up rather early. Remind me to shave."
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW LIFE
I
When Gracie entered the drawing-room of her suite, she went straight to
the windows and opened them wide, looked at St. James's Park below,
along whose avenues men and girls were already hurrying earnestly
northward in the direction of the Green Park and Piccadilly; she
thirstily drank in large draughts of the foliage-perfumed air, for it
seemed to her that she could still smell Smithfield's meat. The
flame-tinted new curtains waved their folds high into the room.
Naturally Tessa the maid had forgotten the standing instruction to open
windows on arrival. After a few cleansing moments Gracie passed into her
bedroom. It was dark. She impatiently switched on the electricity. A
suit-case, unfastened, lay on the floor, and a jewel-case, shut, on the
bed. No other sign of habitation! The dressing-table was bare, save for
the customary hotel pin-cushion and small china tray. The curtains had
not been opened, nor the blinds raised.
"Tessa!" she called, after opening the window. No answer. She had a
qualm of apprehension. She passed into the bathroom. Not a sign of
habitation in the bathroom either. It might have been a dehumanised
bathroom in a big furniture store. The next door, ajar, led to a smaller
bedroom, Tessa's. Gracie pushed against it. Darkness there too. Gracie
turned the switch. Tessa was stretched asleep on, not in, the bed.
Gracie could see the left wrist which she herself had bandaged two or
three hours earlier, and on the bandage was a very faint reddish
discoloration. Gracie, who several years earlier after witnessing rather
helplessly a motor-accident at Brooklands had qualified for a first-aid
certificate, examined the bandage in silence. No danger. The wrist had
bled since the bandaging, but was bleeding no longer. Tessa slept
undisturbed. Her pretty face was so pale, tragic, and exhausted in sleep
that Gracie crept out of the bedroom and softly closed the door in a
sudden passion of quasi-maternal pity. The qualm of apprehension
recurred.
In the bathroom she threw down her hat and cloak, and pulled off the
beige frock. Yes, the blood on the shoulder was very plain. The swift,
startling realisation of its origin had alone caused her to blush when
Evelyn remarked on it. That blood came not from Smithfield, nor was it
the blood of any slain animal. When Gracie had come up to the suite for
two minutes before starting for Smithfield she had found Tessa in the
maid's bedroom, a vague figure in the unlit gloom, and had summoned her
very sharply--sharpness of excitement working above secret fatigue. A
sudden alarmed cry from Tessa: "Oh! I've cut myself with the scissors!"
A hand knocking against her shoulder in the gloom. How had the girl
contrived to injure her wrist, and what was she doing with the scissors
in the dark? Gracie, too hurried to pursue the enquiry, had dragged
Tessa into the light of the bathroom, found the simple first-aid
apparatus without which she never travelled, and bound up the wrist. The
wound was somewhat sanguinary, but not at all serious. Tessa was an
efficient maid, but apart from the performance of her duties
lackadaisical, characterless, and slothful. She could sit idle for
hours, not even reading, and when she read she read sentimental drivel.
She was older by two years than Gracie, who always regarded her as a
junior. A doctor had once pronounced her anæmic. The wrist duly nursed,
Gracie had soothed and enheartened Tessa and told her to sit down for a
bit; then, after changing hat and cloak, had run out. Thus in the suite
had been spent the twenty minutes that Evelyn had spent waiting in the
great hall.
Flickers of suspicious surmising had gleamed at intervals in Gracie's
mind. She recalled having explained to Tessa, many months ago, a few
picturesque details of anatomy learnt in the first-aid course--how there
was a certain part of the wrist which, etc., etc.--how an incision upon
that part would be just as effective, and assuredly less painful and
messy, than an attack on the throat with a razor, etc. Playful teasing.
Nothing more. Forgotten as soon as said. Remembered now. Had not Tessa's
manner been sometimes strange on board the ship? Had not Gracie
sometimes fancied that she might be victimised by an unrequited love--in
the style of her novelettes? Absurd. Yet not wholly absurd. No one more
capable of a desperate act when roused than your silly, taciturn,
lackadaisical anæmic. Gracie was rendered solemn, was snatched
momentarily away from self-contemplation, by the idea that she had
perhaps for days been terribly close to a mortal tragedy without
guessing it.... However, Tessa was asleep. The peril of a tragedy, if
peril there had been, was over. No wonder that, quitting the bedroom,
Gracie had gazed on the maid as a mature mother on a senseless child.
II
In her own bedroom Gracie knelt down and unpacked the suit-case; then
arranged the toilet-table; then undressed completely, turned on the
water in the bathroom and bathed. She opened the door of Tessa's room to
make sure that the noise of the water had not wakened the girl. Not a
sound there. She put on blue silk pyjamas, and surveyed herself, moving
to and fro, in the wardrobe mirror. She laid her small, elaborately
embroidered travelling pillow on the hotel pillow, lit the bed-lamp,
drew the blinds, closed the curtains, got into bed, switched off the
lamp. She shut her eyes.
She was intensely conscious of her body, of the silkiness of her
pyjamas, of the soft ridges of embroidery in the pillow. Luxurious
repose. Extreme exhaustion; not merely physical; emotional. Exhaustion
induced by the violence of her sensations and her aspirations in
Smithfield Central Market and in the crypt below it. Thoughts of Tessa
had receded. Once again she was absorbed in self-contemplation. Despite
fatigue, an impulse to initiate immediately her secret project grew in
her. It became imperious. She fought it, was beaten. She lit the lamp,
hesitated, arose, put on the rich dressing-gown from the foot of the
bed, passed into the drawing-room, carrying with her the jewel-case. It
was locked--of course. The key was probably in Tessa's bag. She was
bound to go back to Tessa's room. Still no sound nor movement there. She
found the bag; she found the key-chain. Now, she was no more interested
in Tessa.
In the drawing-room she opened the jewel-case, and took from it a
morocco manuscript-book, virginal, which she had bought in New York. It
had a lock, and the tiny key hung from the lock by a silk thread
coloured to match the binding of the gilt-edged book. She sat herself at
the desk, with the book opened in front of her, and seized a pen. The
moment, she judged, was critical in her life. It might, it should and
would, mark the beginning of a new life.
Slowly had been forming in her the resolution to write--to write
literature. She had written one or two poems, and torn them up. No doubt
they were worthless. But she knew them by heart. And perhaps they were
not worthless. She had determined to write a journal of her impressions.
She wrote the word 'London,' with the date, and underlined it, her hand
trembling slightly from excitement, her mind thrilled by the memory of
acute sensations felt in Smithfield. Her sensations seemed marvellous,
unique. If only she could put them on paper. Formidable enterprise!
Her eye fell on a three-signal bell-tablet on the desk, 'waiter, valet,
maid.' She must have some tea. She pressed the little knob for the
waiter. True, she needed tea, but what influenced her as much as the
need was a wish to delay the effort of writing the first momentous
sentence in the book, the inception of the new life.
When the waiter had received her order he said:
"If you please, miss, there is a telephone-message for Sir Henry; he
does not answer the telephone and his bedroom-door is locked."
"What next?" thought Gracie, startled; and asked the waiter in a casual
tone:
"What is the message?"
The waiter gave her a telephone-slip. She read: "Mr. Orcham is very
sorry to say that he has outside appointments which will keep him away
from the hotel all day." She said to the waiter: "All right. I'll see
that Sir Henry gets the message."
She was alarmed. She knew her father. If he had been suggesting an
interview with Mr. Orcham, and this was the reply to the suggestion,
there would certainly be an explosion, and trouble between the two men.
The Napoleonic Henry Savott was just about the last man to tolerate such
a curt message--especially from a hotel-manager! And somehow she could
not bear the prospect of trouble between these two powerful
individualities. ("Why can't I?" she asked herself.) After she had drunk
the celestial tea, she rang up her father in the next suite. Fortunately
Napoleon had wakened.
"I say, dad--yes, it's me--do you know you've been fast asleep and
they've been trying to get a message to you, from Mr. Orcham. He says
he'll let you know as soon as possible later in the day. He's
frightfully sorry, but he's just had to go out on very urgent business."
She rang off.
Well, there it was! She'd done it. She had ravelled the skein, and she
would have to unravel it. How? She would face the problem later. Such
was Gracie's method. Anyhow she would have to communicate with Mr.
Orcham. But later. A rush of the most vivid impressions of Smithfield,
sensations at Smithfield, swept from her brain down her right arm. She
could actually feel their passage. She began to write. She wrote slowly,
with difficulty, with erasures. Everything but Smithfield vanished from
her mind. The concentration of her mind was positively awful; that is to
say, it awed her. The new life had opened for her.
CHAPTER IX
CONFERENCE
I
That morning Evelyn called the ten o'clock daily conference of heads of
departments in his own office. In the absence of instructions to the
contrary, it was held in the office of Mr. Cousin. Emile Cousin, the
Hotel-manager (whose name was pronounced in the hotel in the English
way), was a Frenchman, similar to Evelyn in build, and of about Evelyn's
age, but entirely grown up, whereas bits of the boy remained obstinately
embedded in Evelyn's adult constitution.
'Director' was Evelyn's official title, short for 'managing
director'--the medium of communication between the organism of the hotel
and the Board of Directors of the company which owned both the Palace
and the Wey. The authority of the Board (of which Evelyn was
vice-chairman) stood above Evelyn's in theory, though not in practice.
It was out of a sort of private bravado that Evelyn presided that
morning at the conference, which had not seen him for over a week. He
had been up extremely early; he had been to Smithfield; he had trotted
about the place; he had accomplished all the directorial correspondence;
and a full day's work lay before him. But his appointment at the Laundry
was not till eleven o'clock. He had, as usual, time in hand, and he
would not waste it; he would expend it remuneratively. He was tired.
More correctly, he would have been tired if he had permitted himself to
be tired. He did not permit. He exulted in the exercise of the function
of management, and especially under difficulties. Could any private
preoccupation, could any hidden fatigue, impair his activity? To ask was
to answer. Nothing could disconcert, embarrass, hamper, frustrate his
activity. "You understand," he would joyously, proudly, say to himself,
"nothing!" It was in the moments which made the heaviest demand upon his
varied faculties that he lived most keenly; and it was in those moments,
too, that his demeanour was lightest.
The room was spacious; it had been enlarged some years earlier by the
removal of a wall, and so changed from an oblong into the shape of an L.
It had two vases of flowers, and there were plants in a box on the
window-sill. (The spacious window framed a view of the picturesque back
of a Queen Anne house and the garden thereof.) Evelyn did not
particularly want the flowers and the plants. But Miss Cass did.
Miss Cass was Evelyn's personal secretary, aged an eternal thirty,
well-dressed, with earnest features and decided movements. She had a
tremendous sense of Evelyn's importance. She was his mother, his
amanuensis, and his slave. She could forge his signature to perfection.
Among her seventy and seven duties, two of the chief, for her, were the
provision of flowers, and the maintenance of a supply of mineral water
on Evelyn's huge, flat desk. She had to make a living, and her salary
was good; but the richest reward of her labours came on the infrequent
occasions when Evelyn pulled a blossom from a vase and stuck it in his
button-hole.
At conferences Evelyn sat behind the desk, with his back to the window;
Miss Cass sat on his left at the desk, and Mr. Cousin on his right. The
other members of the conference--being, principally, the
Reception-manager, the Audit-manager, the Staff-manager, the
Banqueting-manager, the chief engineer, the chief stocktaker, the
Bands-and-Cabaret-manager, the Publicity-manager, the Works-manager, and
the white-haired head-housekeeper (only woman in the conference, for
secretarial Miss Cass was not in the conference but at it)--sat about
the room in odd chairs. Two of them were perched like twins each on the
arm of an easy-chair. Neither the Restaurant-manager nor the
Grill-room-manager was in attendance, both having been at work very
late. Their statistics, however, were in the hands of Miss Cass. The
nationalities represented were Italian, French, Swiss and British, the
last being in a minority. Evelyn and the sedate, reserved Mr. Cousin
were smoking cigars. The rest--such as smoked--contented themselves with
cigarettes. Subtle distinction between seraphim and cherubim in the
hierarchy!
"Who's No. 341, 2 and 3?" asked Evelyn, glancing casually at a
paper--the typed night-report.
"A Mr. Amersham--Australian," answered the Reception-manager instantly.
"Why, sir?"
"Nothing. I only happened to notice that a lady couldn't persuade
herself to leave his rooms till three o'clock this morning. Colonials
are always so attractive," Evelyn continued without a pause,
extinguishing several smiles: "Give me yesterday's figures for the
restaurant, Miss Cass."
Miss Cass obeyed. "Ah! Nineteen pounds up on last year, but twenty-one
more meals served. So it can't be that people aren't satisfied with the
music or the cabaret. Average bill slightly less, and consumption of
champagne per head distinctly less than last year. If we go on at this
rate our £100,000 stock of wine will last for about fifty years. In fact
Prohibition would serve no purpose. Might suggest to Maître Planquet
that he ought to season his dishes with a view to inducing thirst."
Maître Planquet was the chef and grand vizier of the restaurant
kitchens, and had been decorated by the French Government with the
Academic Palms.
General deferential mirth. Everybody loved the Director's occasional
facetiousness. Even Mr. Cousin, who never laughed, would smile his
mysterious, scarcely perceptible smile. Everybody was relieved that the
Director could joke about those statistics. A discussion broke out, for
the most part in imperfect if very fluent English.
"I'd like to see the comparative graphs to-night, Miss Cass," Evelyn
tried to end it, interrupting the wordy Banqueting-manager.
Evelyn knew, and they all knew, that the public tendency towards
sobriety at meals could not be checked. The clientèle was a wind which
blew where it listed. But there was good comfort in the fact that the
clientèle, if increasingly austere, continued to grow in numbers.
Evelyn, however, perceived that he could not end the discussion; at any
rate he could not end it without a too violent use of his powers. It
proceeded. He listened, watchful, and with satisfaction. Most of those
men, and the woman, he had trained in their duties. And he had trained
all of them in the great principle of loyalty to the hotel. They showed
indeed more than loyalty; they showed devotion; they lived devotion.
The majority of them had homes, wives, children, in various parts of
London; real enough, no doubt; cherished; perhaps loved. But seen from
within the hotel these domestic backgrounds were far distant, dim,
shadowy, insubstantial. When the interests of the hotel clashed with the
interests of the backgrounds, the backgrounds gave way, eagerly,
zealously. The departmental heads had their hours of daily service, but
these hours were elastic; that is to say, they would stretch
indefinitely--never contract. Urgently summoned back too soon from a
holiday, the heads would appear, breathless--and smiling; eager for the
unexpected task. One or other of them was continually being tempted to a
new and more splendid post; but nobody ever yielded to the temptation
unless Evelyn, frankly consulted, advised yielding. (He did occasionally
so advise, and the hotels and restaurants of Europe, and some in
America, were dotted with important men whose prestige sprang from their
service at the Imperial Palace.) There were many posts, but there was
only one Imperial Palace on earth. The Palace was their world and their
religion; its pre-eminence their creed, its welfare their supreme aim.
They respected and adored Evelyn. He was their god. Or, if the Palace
was the god, Evelyn was the god-maker, above god.
There they sat, fiercely disputing, some in the correctness of
morning-coats, others (who had no contacts with the clientèle), in
undandiacal lounge-suits, smoking, gesticulating, wrangling, the
Englishmen and Mr. Cousin taciturn, the other foreigners shooting new
foreign lights on the enigma of the idiosyncrasies of the British and
American clientèle: not one of them advancing a single constructive
suggestion for fostering the appetites of the exasperating clientèle!
And there sat Evelyn, the creator of the modernised Palace, and of the
religion of the Palace, and of the corporate spirit of its high-priests;
a benevolent expression on his face, but an expression with a trace of
affectionate derision in it. He let them rip, not because they were
furthering the cult of the god by their noise, but because he enjoyed
the grand spectacle of their passion. He deeply felt, then, that he had
created something more marvellous than even the hotel. He knew that he
was far their superior in brains, enterprise, ingenuity, tact; and this
conviction lurked in his steady, good-humoured smile; but he knew also
that in strenuous selfless loyalty he was not their superior. After all,
the rewarding glory of success was his, not theirs.
II
The altercation flagged, and, seeing her chance, Mrs. O'Riordan, the
head-housekeeper, sixty-two years of age and as slim and natty as a girl
in her black artificial silk, killed it with a question. Mrs. O'Riordan,
who lived her whole life in two small rooms on the eighth-floor, could
only simulate an interest in the appetites of the incomprehensible
clientèle. What occupied her incessant attention was the upholstery of
the chairs on which people sat, the carpets which they trod, the rooms
in which they slept, the cloak-rooms to which the ladies retired, etc.
She ate little, and somewhat despised cookery.
"I haven't got much time," said Mrs. O'Riordan. "What is going to be
done about that mink-fur business?" And her glance said: "You are males.
You ought to know. Answer me."
Mrs. O'Riordan, though she had no disinclination for the society of men,
exhibited always a certain slight sex-bias, half-defensive,
half-challenging. She was a widowed Yorkshire gentlewoman, had had two
Irish military husbands, and still possessed three sons, one of whom
regularly sent flowers to her with his best love on her birthday, while
the other two, in India, only wrote to her in reply to her rare letters
to them. In the solitude of her eyrie on the eighth-floor, absorbed
morning and night in the direction of her complex department, she
sometimes found a minute to regret that neither of her husbands had
given her a daughter. She would have liked a girl in those houses in
County Meath. Together, she and a daughter would have formed a powerful
opposition to the male ascendancy.
"Mink?" asked Evelyn, his tone conveying astonishment that he should be
in ignorance of any happening within the hotel.
"I only heard of it myself an hour since," said Mr. Cousin.
"You were not in your office at half-past twelve last night, Mr.
Cousin," Mrs. O'Riordan addressed the French manager, with a polite
implication of reproach for slackness.
"No," said Mr. Cousin. "I went home at a quarter to twelve."
"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Riordan drily. "This happened at twelve-thirty."
She then related to Evelyn how a lady who had been dining with two other
ladies had presented a ticket in the ladies' cloak-room, and on
receiving a fur in exchange for it had asked for her 'other fur,'
alleging positively that she had deposited two furs, the second one a
priceless mink, given to her by a deceased friend in Chicago. The head
of the cloak-room (who was better acquainted with the secret nature of
women than the most experienced man in the universe), while admitting
the deposit of several minks that evening by other guests (who had
reclaimed them and departed), denied any knowledge of the fur from
Chicago. Unfortunately, the ground-floor housekeeper, Miss Brury, was by
chance in the cloak-room, and, being the head-attendant's official
superior, she had taken charge of the dispute on behalf of the hotel.
Unfortunately--because Miss Brury was very tired and nervous after an
exhausting day of battle with the stupidity and obstinacy of
subordinates and she had been over-candid to the guest, who had
surpassed her in candour. The episode had finished with a shocking
display of mutual recrimination. Both women had had hysterics. Guests of
both sexes had paused at the open door of the cloak-room to listen to
the language; and finally the owner of the alleged missing cloak had
burst through them, and rushed frantically across the hall crying aloud
that the hotel was the resort of thieves, that the hotel-staff was in
league with thieves, and that she would have the law on the lot of them.
Mrs. O'Riordan concluded:
"Long Sam told me that by the time she reached the doors she was
demanding about a million pounds damages. No, she hadn't a car and she
wouldn't have a taxi--said she wouldn't, not for a million
pounds--another million pounds--be beholden to the hotel for
anything.... Oh yes, I came downstairs. I was reading. They fetched
me--for Alice Brury.... No, the two companions of the infuriated lady
had left earlier. She'd stayed talking to someone.... Miss Brury's in
bed to-day."
Even Evelyn blenched at this terrible story, unique in the annals of the
hotel. It was utterly incredible, but he had to believe it. And it was
less incredible than the fact that he had been about, off and on, since
four in the morning and yet no rumour of it had reached him. It was not
on the night-report. Well, it could not have been on the night-report,
whose records did not begin till one o'clock. But Reyer must have heard
of the thing. Long Sam also. Suddenly the obvious explanation of the
mystery occurred to him. Everybody had been assuming that he was already
familiar with the details of the episode, he who always knew everything.
And if _he_ kept silence about the horror, what underling would care or
dare to refer to it in his presence?
He saw shame on every face in the room. And well might there be shame on
every face, for the pride of every person was profoundly humiliated.
"I've just been talking to O'Connor," said Mr. Cousin, impassible. "He's
coming at once. He says he thinks he may have heard of the lady before.
He's calling at the Yard."
O'Connor was the private detective of the hotel.
"I daresay he has," Evelyn observed. "The woman is almost
certainly--well, doesn't matter what she is. She may get away with it.
And if we have to pay her her million pounds or the National Debt, of
course we shall pay it and look pleasant, and that will be that. It's
that scene that matters. You're sure Miss Brury started it, Mrs.
O'Riordan?"
"She admits it herself," answered the Irishwoman. "But when you think of
the provocation----"
"There can't be any such thing as provocation in this hotel," Evelyn
interrupted her blandly. "There never has been before, and there mustn't
be again. If the customer is Judas Iscariot, he's still the customer
till he's safely outside the hotel. That's a principle. The hotel turns
the other cheek every time. I'm afraid we shall have to find another job
for Miss Brury."
Murmurs of assent.
"The poor thing says she wouldn't stay on here for anything."
"Well then," said Evelyn. "We must struggle on as best we can without
her."
"Yes," retorted Mrs. O'Riordan, rendered audacious and contrarious by
nerves. "It's all very well for you men to talk like that. But if you
knew the difficulties----" She glanced at Mr. Semple, the Staff-manager,
as if for moral support. But the prudent Mr. Semple gave no response.
"We'll have a chat later," said Evelyn.
He was thinking that at least a year was required for the training of a
housekeeper, and that Mrs. O'Riordan had referred not long ago to the
dearth of really good candidates. Mrs. O'Riordan was in favour of
engaging women of her own class, her theory being that gentlewomen could
exercise better authority over chambermaids and valets, and also could
deal more effectively with peevish and recalcitrant visitors; and Evelyn
had agreed with her, had thought that he agreed with her; at any rate he
had expressed agreement. Miss Brury was of a lower origin. She had
failed to stand the racket. Her failure had seriously smirched the
hotel. Would a gentlewoman have done better? Possibly, he thought. But
he was by no means sure. Still, he would support Mrs. O'Riordan's desire
for gentlewomen on the Floors. Mrs. O'Riordan, invaluable, irreplaceable
(not quite, of course, but nearly), showed the independent attitude
which comes from the possession of a small private income. He had known
himself to accept her ideas against his own judgment. The fact was that
she had a certain quality of formidableness....
Delicate situation, this, arising out of the scene and out of the dearth
of good candidates. But he had complete confidence in his ability to
resolve it. What a damned nuisance women were, gentlewomen as well as
their social inferiors! He knew that the Banqueting-manager was boiling
up for a commotion with the head-housekeeper about the use of a room
near the ball-room. Tact----
The telephone bell rang, and Miss Cass answered it.
"S O S. from Weybridge, sir," said Miss Cass to Evelyn. "Some difficulty
with the contractors over the alterations to the restaurant. The work is
at a standstill. Mr. Plott would be very much obliged if you could run
down there at once, instead of this afternoon. But you can't. You are
due at the Laundry at eleven. It's after half-past ten."
"Why can't I?" said Evelyn instantly. "I could go to the Laundry this
afternoon. Tell them I'll be there at three--no, four. And tell Mr.
Plott I'm coming to him now. And ask if my car is waiting."
"It's bound to be, sir. Brench is always early."
"I'll leave the rest to you, Cousin," Evelyn murmured to the
Hotel-manager.
In twenty seconds he was quitting the office, with gay nods and smiles,
and a special smile for Mrs. O'Riordan. He was not gravely alarmed about
the Wey restaurant. Nor was he flinching from problems at the Palace.
Nor was his gaiety assumed. Problems were his meat and drink. He saw in
the longish drive to Weybridge an opportunity for full happy reflection.
He knew that he would return to the Palace with detailed solutions whose
ingenuity would impress everybody. His life was of enthralling interest
to him. No other kind of life could be as interesting. To-morrow, in
addition to the General Meetings of the Company, there would be Sir
Henry Savott to manipulate. Perhaps if he conferred with Sir Henry in
the latter's suite, as he properly might, he would encounter Gracie
again. But the figure of Gracie had slipped away, like a ship standing
out to sea.
CHAPTER X
LAUNDRY
I
The already famous Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry occupied part of a
piece of freehold ground in a broad, tram-enlivened street in
Kennington. The part unbuilt upon was a rather wild garden in which were
many flowers. Evelyn foresaw the time when the Laundry would have to be
enlarged, and the garden would cease to be. But at present the garden
flourished and bloomed, and work-girls were taking their tea and
bread-and-butter in it under the bright, warm September sun.
The spectacle of the garden and the lolling, lounging, tea-spilling
work-girls delighted Evelyn on his arrival that afternoon, as it always
delighted him. He would point out to visitors the curving flagged paths,
the scientifically designed benches, the pond with authentic goldfish
gliding to and fro therein, and the vine. The vine bore grapes,
authentic grapes. True, they were small, hard, sour and quite uneatable,
but they were grapes, growing in the open air of Kennington, within
thirty feet of roaring, red trams. He was perhaps prouder of the garden
as a pleasance for work-girls than of the Laundry itself. He had created
the Laundry. He had not designed the buildings nor the machinery, nor
laid brick on brick nor welded pipe to pipe, nor dug the Artesian wells
nor paved the yards. But he had thought the whole place and its
efficiency and its spirit into being--against some opposition from his
Board of Directors.
It was a success. It drew over half a million gallons of water a week
from the exhaustless wells; it often used six thousand gallons of water
in an hour. It employed over two hundred immortal souls, chiefly the
enigmatic young feminine. It fed these girls. It taught them to sing and
to act and to dance and to sew and to make frocks. It kept a doctor and
a dentist and a nurse for them. It washed all the linen of the Imperial
Palace and the Wey hotels and all the linen that the hotel guests chose
to entrust to it. It served also three hundred private customers, and
its puce-tinted motor-vans were beginning to be recognised in the
streets. It paid ten per cent. on its capital, and, with the aid of the
latest ingenuities of American and English machinery, it was estimated
to increase the life of linen by one-third. And considering the price of
linen.... Americans who inspected the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry
said that while there were far larger laundries in the United States,
there was no laundry comparable with Evelyn's, either industrially or
socially. Evelyn believed them. What he had difficulty in realising was
that without his own creative thought and his perseverance in face of
obstruction, the Laundry would never have existed. To him it always had
the air of a miracle. Such as it was, it was his contribution towards
the millennium, towards a heaven on earth.
As he entered the precincts a few of the uniformed girls smiled
diffidently to greet him, and he smiled back and waved his stick, and
passed into the building. He was a quarter of an hour late, but this
lamentable fact did not disturb him. For he had done over four hours'
concentrated hard work down at Weybridge. He had telephoned for the
architect and for the principal partner of the contracting firm of
builders, and they had both obeyed the summons. He and they and the
manager of the Wey had measured, argued, eaten together, argued again
and measured again, and finally by dint of compromises had
satisfactorily emerged from a dilemma which, Evelyn softly maintained,
commonsense and foresight ought to have been able to avoid. Oh yes, he
awarded part of the blame to himself! He had quitted the Wey in triumph.
He had left the manager thereof in a state of worshipping relief, and
the architect and the contractor in a state of very deferential
admiration. He was content with Evelyn Orcham. A hefty fellow, Evelyn
Orcham!
The one stain on the bright day was that he had settled nothing in his
mind on the way down about the Miss Brury calamity; and on the way up to
London he had been too excited by his achievement in the suburb to think
about anything else. (Assuredly he was not completely grown up.)
However, there was time enough yet to think constructively upon the Miss
Brury calamity. He was conscious of endless reserves of energy, and as
soon as he had dealt with the simmering trouble at the Laundry he would
seize hold of the Palace problem and shake it like a rat!
And there stood Cyril Purkin, the manager of the Laundry, in the doorway
leading to the staff dining-room. A short, fairly thin figure; a short
but prominent pawky nose; small, cautious, 'downy,' even suspicious
eyes; light ruffled hair; and a sturdy, half-defiant demeanour. A
Midlander, aged thirty-eight, Evelyn sometimes wondered where the man
bought his suits. They were good and well-fitting suits, but they had
nothing whatever of a West End cut. The origin of his very neat neckties
was similarly a mystery to Evelyn. His foot was small and almost
elegant.
Mr. Purkin had begun life as a chemical engineer; he had gone on to
soap-making, then laundry management, then soap-making again, then
laundry management again. One day, when the foundations of the Imperial
Palace Hotel Laundry had hardly been laid, Evelyn had received a letter
which began: "Sir,--Having been apprised that you are about to
inaugurate a laundry on modern lines, I beg respectfully to offer my
services as manager. I am at present..." The phrasing of the letter
was succinct, the calligraphy very precise, regular and clear, and the
signature just as formal as the rest of the writing. The letter
attracted Evelyn. How had the man been clever enough to get himself
'apprised' of the advent of a new laundry on modern lines? And how came
he to have the wit to write to Evelyn personally? Evelyn's name was
never given out as the manager of the Imperial Palace. Mr. Purkin's
qualifications proved to be ample; his testimonials were beyond cavil.
His talk in conversation was intelligent, independent, very
knowledgeable; and he had strong notions concerning the 'welfare' side
of laundries, which notions specially appealed to Evelyn. He was
engaged. He gave immense satisfaction. His one weakness was that he was
the perfect man, utterly expert, utterly reliable, superhuman.
He was still the chemical engineer. He seldom mentioned sheets,
chemises, collars, towels, stockings, and such-like common concrete
phenomena. He would discourse upon the 'surface tension' of water,
'breaking down,' albumen, 'Base Exchange,' centrifugal cleansing, the
sequence of waters, 'residual alkalis,' chlorine, warps and woofs,
'efflorescence,' etc., etc. He had established a research department, in
which he was the sole worker.
As he deferentially shook hands with the great man his attitude said:
"Of course you are my emperor, but between ourselves I am as good as
you, and you know it, and you know also that I have always delivered the
goods."
And yet somewhere behind Mr. Purkin's shrewd little eyes there was
something of the defensive as well as of the sturdy defiant, together
with a glimmering of an uneasy consciousness that he had not always
delivered the goods and that he too was imperfect--through no fault of
his own.
"I must really show you this, sir," said he, introducing Evelyn into the
small managerial room where on the desk lay a pile of examination
papers. "Question," he read out, picking up a paper, "'Why are white
fabrics blued in order to procure a general appearance of whiteness?'
Answer: 'White fabrics are blued because there are more yellow rays in
the spectrum, and we use blue to counteract the yellow rays.' Wouldn't
you say, sir, that that's rather well and tersely put for a girl of
sixteen and a half? These exam papers are useful as an index to
character as well as to attainments."
Evelyn heartily agreed, and for courtesy's sake glanced at the paper.
"I see you've got all the painting finished," said he. "Looks much
better."
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purkin. "Ah! I must show you one thing that I thought
of. An idea I had, and I've carried it out."
He drew Evelyn into the Laundry itself, walking with short, decided
steps. They passed through two large and lofty interiors filled with
machines and with uniformed girls (the girls did not all have their tea
simultaneously), girls ironing, girls folding, girls carrying, girls
sorting, amid steel in movement, heat, moisture, and a general gleaming
whiteness. He halted, directing Evelyn's attention to a row of pipes
near the ceiling, painted in different colours.
"Red for hot water, blue for cold water, yellow for steam. The three
primary colours. When a minor repair is necessary it isn't always easy
to tell at a glance everywhere which pipe is which. By this system you
can't make a mistake. Costs no more. I thought you'd approve."
"Brilliant," said Evelyn. "Brilliant. I congratulate you." Possibly a
trace of derision in Evelyn's benevolent laudatory tone.
"And there's the new drier," Mr. Purkin continued, and led his chief to
a room where two women, one mature, overblown and beautiful, and the
other young but as plain as a suet pudding, were working in a
temperature of 119 degrees. Evelyn had to admire and marvel again. Nor
was that the end of the tour of novelties. Mr. Purkin's ingenuity and
his passion for improvements were endless. And as Evelyn went from table
to table and from machine to machine and from group to group of girls,
busy either individually or in concert, and from pile to growing or
lessening pile of linen, and as he sought for the private lives and the
characters of girls in the lowered, intent faces of girls, he
sardonically thought: "This chap is putting off the fatal moment on
purpose. And doing it very well too. Creating all this atmosphere of
approval. Damn clever fellow! Pity he isn't clever enough to see that I
can see through him."
But, back in Mr. Purkin's prim, stuffy, excessively neat little office,
the Midlander boldly summoned the moment.
"I'm glad you were able to come to-day, sir, because I was getting
anxious for you to see for yourself we aren't standing still here. I
know you're always interested, very interested, but we like to see you
here, all of 'em like to see you. It makes us all feel that we kind of
'belong.'... Oh! Upon my word, I was forgetting to tell you that the
number of pieces from private customers passed the twenty thousand mark
last week--at last. You'll receive the figures to-morrow."
"Good! Good! You always said it would."
"But there was another thing I wanted to see you about."
"Oh!" Evelyn exclaimed, feigning ignorance.
"Yes. About those frilled dress-shirts last Thursday."
"Oh! That!"
"Yes," continued Mr. Purkin. "Yes, sir. You may have forgotten, but I
can assure you that I haven't."
Now the affair of the frilled shirts was one of those molehills which
are really mountains. In a few hours it had swollen itself into a Mont
Blanc. A guest who was a public character and who had been staying at
the Palace for weeks and spending quite a lot of money, had complained
about the ironing of his frilled evening shirts. Mrs. O'Riordan herself
had taken the matter up. Mrs. O'Riordan had given her word that the
frilled shirts should be ironed to the owner's satisfaction, and at the
end of ten days Mrs. O'Riordan had redeemed her word. Triumph for the
hotel. Smiles from the guest. And for Mr. Immerson, the hotel's
Publicity-manager, material for one or two piquant newspaper paragraphs.
On the last day of his sojourn the guest had reached the state of being
convinced that his celebrated frilled shirts had never been so perfectly
done before. No laundry like the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry! His
desire was to leave the Palace with the largest possible stock of
frilled shirts ironed by its Laundry. "Can I rely on having these three
shirts back to-night?" he had asked. _Of course!_ Could he doubt it? Was
it not a basic principle of the Laundry that all linen consigned in the
morning was delivered absolutely without fail the same evening? It was.
But the unique shirts had not been delivered, and the next morning the
guest, disillusioned, wounded, inconsolable, had had to depart without
them. A child disappointed of a promised toy, a religionist whose faith
has been suddenly struck from under him, could not have exhibited more
woe than the deceived guest. True, the shirts were sent after him by
air-mail to Paris and got there first. But inefficiency remained
inefficiency; and the Laundry's lapse had shocked every housekeeper at
the Palace. The foundations of the Palace had for an instant trembled.
The unimaginative individuals who snorted that three shirts ought not to
be enough to shake the foundations of a nine-storey building simply did
not understand that such edifices as the Imperial Palace were not built
with hands.
Evelyn had by no means forgotten the affair. A minor purpose of his
visit to Kennington had indeed been to get to the bottom of it. He knew
that Mr. Purkin guessed this, and that Mr. Purkin knew that Evelyn knew
that he guessed. Nevertheless the two men continued to pretend.
"I was under the impression that it had been explained," said Evelyn.
"You had only one girl who specialised in these preposterous shirts, and
she was taken ill or something at the very moment when your need of her
was most desperate."
"No, sir," said Mr. Purkin with brave candour, "the matter has not been
explained--to _you_; at least not satisfactorily. The girl, Rose, was
not taken ill. She merely walked out and left us in the lurch. We have
the best class of girls here. I remember when laundry staffs had to be
recruited from riff-raff. We've altered all that, by improving the
conditions. I knew Rose; I thought highly of her; I knew her father, a
house-painter, most respectable. And yet she walks out! She'll never
walk in again, I may say, not as long as I'm manager here. Naturally I
got the shirts done, in a way, next morning. But that's not the point."
The drama of Mr. Purkin's deep but restrained indignation genuinely
affected Evelyn. It seemed to produce vibrations in the physical
atmosphere of the office.
"What a man!" thought Evelyn appreciatively. "Such loyalty to the
I.P.H.L. is priceless. Of course his sense of proportion's a bit askew;
but you can't have everything." He said aloud gently: "Why did this Rose
walk out?"
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purkin. "I will tell you, sir." He went to a
file-cabinet, and chose a card from two or three hundred cards, and
offered it to Evelyn. "_That's_ why she walked out."
On the card was a chart of the wicked girl's mouth, of her upper jaw and
her lower jaw. "Look at it, Mr. Orcham. You see the number of bad teeth
on it. I ordered her the dentist. She made an excuse twice--something
about her mother's wishes; I'm certain it wasn't the father. As you know
better than anyone, every girl who's engaged by me here has to promise
she'll allow us to keep her in good health, mother or no mother. On that
afternoon I told her I'd made an appointment for her with the dentist
for the next morning, and that she positively must keep it. I spoke very
quietly. Well, as soon as my back is turned, out of this Laundry she
walks! Without notice! Of course it was the staff-manageress's business
to see to it. But as she had failed twice, I had to take the matter up
myself. No alternative. Discipline is discipline. And just _look_ at the
charts of that mouth!"
"Quite!" said Evelyn. He was laughing, but not visibly. "Quite!"
"The truth is," Mr. Purkin continued, "there would have been no
bother--I'm sure of it--if only I'd had a little more moral support."
At this point Mr. Purkin pulled out his cigarette-case and actually
offered it to the panjandrum. Probably no other member of the Palace
staff, no matter how exalted, with the possible exception of Mr. Cousin,
would have ventured upon such a familiarity with Evelyn. But Mr. Purkin
was exceedingly if secretly perturbed, and the offering of a cigarette
to the great man was his way of trying to conceal his perturbation; it
was also a way of demonstrating the Purkinian conviction that he was as
good as anybody--even Evelyn.
"Thanks," said Evelyn, taking a cigarette, not because he did not fear
Mr. Purkin's cigarettes, but because he sympathetically understood the
manager's motive--or the first part of it. "You mean support from the
staff-manageress?"
"I mean Miss--er," muttered Mr. Purkin, and he blushed. He would have
given a vast sum not to blush; but he blushed, this pawky,
self-confident, disciplinary Midlander. He had opened his mouth with the
intention of boldly saying Miss Violet Powler, the staff-manageress's
name; but his organs of speech, basely betraying him, refused their
office. A few seconds of restraint ensued.
"Sex!" thought Evelyn. "Sex! Here it is again."
He did not object to sex as a factor in the problems of a great
organism. He rather liked it. And he knew that anyhow it was and must be
a factor ever recurring in those problems. He had heard, several months
earlier, that an 'affair' was afoot between Mr. Purkin and Violet
Powler. How did these rumours get abroad? He could not say. Nobody could
say. In the present case a laundry-girl might have seen a gesture or a
glance, or caught a tone--nothing, less than nothing--as the manager and
the staff-manageress passed together through the busy rooms. The
laundry-girl might have mentioned it slyly to another laundry-girl. The
rumour is born. The rumour spreads with the rapidity of fire, or of an
odour, or of influenza. It rises from stratum to stratum of the social
structure. Finally it reaches the august ear of Evelyn himself. For it
could not be lost; it could not die; and it could not cease to rise till
it could rise no higher.
Evelyn had gathered that the affair was a subject for merriment, that
people regarded as comic the idea of amorous tenderness between the
manager and the staff-manageress of the Laundry. In his own mind he did
not accept this view. To him there was something formidable, marvellous,
and indeed beautiful in the mystic spectacle of Aphrodite springing from
the hot dampness of the Laundry and lodging herself in the disciplinary
soul of Cyril Purkin. Nor did he foresee harm to the organism in the
marriage of Cyril and Violet.
"I wouldn't say one word against her," said Mr. Purkin, exerting all his
considerable powers of self-control. "I chose her out of scores, and
probably a better woman for the job of staff-manageress couldn't be
found. But in this matter--and in one or two others similar--I'm bound
to admit I've been a bit disappointed. Discipline is the foundation of
everything here, and if it isn't enforced, where are you? I'm bound to
say I don't quite see... She's inclined to be very set in her views."
He lifted his eyebrows, implying imminent calamity.
"Curse this sex!" thought Evelyn. "She's refused him. Or they've had a
row. Or something else has happened. He wants her to go. He'll make her
go. He can't bear her here. She's on his nerves. But he's still in love
with her, even if he doesn't know it. What a complication! How the devil
_can_ you handle it? Curse this sex!"
But he was moved by the sudden disclosure of Mr. Purkin's emotion, and
he admired Mr. Purkin's mastery of it. He had never felt more esteem for
the man than just then.
Mr. Purkin lit both cigarettes, and the pair talked, without too closely
gripping the thorns of the situation.
"Well," said Evelyn at length gently. "We'd better leave things for a
while. If I do get a chance perhaps I might have a chat with Miss
Powler----"
"Well, Mr. Orcham, if anybody can do anything you can." But Mr. Purkin's
accents gave a clue to his private opinion that not even Mr. Orcham
could do anything.
Soon afterwards Evelyn left, saying that he would 'see.' For the moment
he could not 'see.' As he walked away, the last batch of girls was
quitting the garden. He got into his car.
"Home."
Brench touched his hat.
"Wait," said Evelyn suddenly, and descended from the car.
II
He had changed his mind. Why postpone the interview with Violet Powler?
Was he afraid of bringing the trouble to the stage of a crisis? He was
not.
He re-entered the buildings by the 'A' gates, which admitted vans loaded
with soiled linen. The linen, having passed through the Laundry and
become clean, was basketed and piled into vans which drove out through
the 'B' gates. He wandered alone, apparently aimless, in the warm,
humid, pale departments, until he recognised the door lettered
"Staff-manageress." It was half open.
Without touching it he glanced in. Miss Violet Powler sat facing the
window, her back to the door. She was talking to a young, tall woman. A
small table separated them, and on this table lay a finished shirt and
some coloured threads.
"But, Lilian," Miss Powler was saying, "you know well enough that a red
thread means starched; you know that no articles from No. 291 have to be
starched, and yet you put a red thread into this one. Why? There must be
some explanation, and I want you to tell me what it is." Her tone was
soothing, persuasive.
"But, miss," said the woman, holding up a red thread, "this isn't a red
thread--it's green--not starched."
"That's a green thread?"
"Yes, miss."
"Take it to the window and look at it." The woman obeyed.
"Yes, miss. It's green all right," said she, turning her head and
confidently smiling.
Miss Powler paused, and then she began to laugh.
"Very well. Never mind, Lilian. You come and see me before you start
work to-morrow, will you?"
Lilian, puzzled, left the room, and Evelyn stood aside for her to pass
out.
"Colour-blind, eh?" Evelyn walked straight into the small office,
laughing. "I happened to hear. Door open. Didn't want to break in. So I
waited."
"Yes, Mr. Orcham. Please excuse me. I hadn't the slightest idea you were
at the door. Yes, colour-blind."
Evelyn put his hat on the small table and sat down. Miss Powler shut the
door.
"As a funny coincidence I really think that ought to have the first
prize." Evelyn laughed again, and Miss Powler smiled. "I suppose she's
the one woman in the place who ought to be able to be relied on to tell
green from red, and she's colour-blind! No, not first prize. No. It
deserves a gold medal." His stick joined in the laughter by tapping on
the floor. "Sort of thing you can't possibly foresee, therefore can't
guard against, eh? Unless Mr. Purkin decides to institute eye-tests for
the staff. But of course those delightful coincidences never happen
twice. How's the Dramatic Society getting along?"
Miss Powler sat down at her desk.
It was her way of smiling, her way--at once dignified and modest--of
sitting down, and her way of answering his question about the Laundry
A.D.S., that suggested to him a wild, absurd, fantastical scheme for
killing two birds with one stone.
Miss Powler wore a plain, straight, blue frock, quite short. (The hotel
rule prescribing black for heads of departments did not obtain in the
Laundry.) As she sat down her knees had been visible for an instant. Her
brown hair was laid flat, but glossy. Without being pretty, her features
were agreeable, and her habitual expression was very agreeable. Her
eyes, dark brown, were sedate, with some humour somewhere behind them,
waiting a chance to get out. No powder, no paint. An appearance which
mingled attractiveness with austerity.
Evelyn had in his office a private card-index of all the Company's
principal employees. He rarely forgot anything once learnt, and now he
had no difficulty in recalling that Miss Powler lived in Battersea, the
daughter of a town-traveller in tinned comestibles--certainly a humble
town-traveller. But there are women who when they leave the home lose
their origin, just as a woman's hat loses its price when it leaves the
shop. Only an expert could say with assurance of a hat on a woman's head
in the street whether it cost five guineas or two. Miss Powler might
have been the daughter of a humble town-traveller, or of a successful
dentist, or even of a solicitor.
"Well," Evelyn began, "you're the staff-manageress, according to the
label on your door, and I must tell you that I think you managed the
Lilian member of the staff very nicely. Very nicely." Miss Powler
smiled. "But all cases aren't so simple, are they?"
"They aren't, sir."
"I've been asking Mr. Purkin about the Rose member. Mrs. O'Riordan, our
head-housekeeper at the Palace, was particularly anxious for me to
enquire into Rose's case. In fact, between ourselves, that was one of
the reasons why I came down here to-day." Two fibs and a semi-fib! He
had not asked Mr. Purkin. Mr. Purkin had started the subject and
volunteered all information. Mrs. O'Riordan had shown no anxiety
whatever for him to investigate the affair. And the affair was not
strictly one of the reasons for his visit, seeing that he had not heard
of it until after the visit had been definitely arranged. But the two
and a half fibs did not irk Evelyn's conscience. They were
diplomatically righteous fibs, good and convincing fibs, designed to
prevent possible friction. On a busy day he might tell as many as fifty
such fibs: and he had never been found out. Miss Powler gave no sign of
constraint or self-consciousness. To all appearance she had no nerves.
"I was sorry to lose Rose," said Miss Powler. "She was a first-rate
fancy ironer. But of course if she hadn't gone of her own accord she'd
have had to go all the same. Because she'd never have let the dentist
attend to her. She's too fond of her mother for that. She adores her.
The mother's rather pretty and really very young. When she was Rose's
age she was a chorus-girl in a touring company for six months. She ought
to have kept on being a chorus-girl. She certainly wasn't fit to be a
mother. Her head's full of the silliest ideas, poor thing! One of her
ideas is that dentists pull teeth out for the sake of doing it. Makes
them feel proud, she thinks. No use arguing with that sort of a woman.
They _really_ believe whatever they want to believe."
"I know what you mean."
"She made Rose promise not to see the dentist, said it was slave-driving
for an employer to force a girl to see a dentist. And all that. She'll
go on the stage, Rose will, and her father won't be able to stop her.
I'm very sorry for the girl. Naturally, if Mr. Purkin makes a rule and
gives an order, there's nothing more to be said. I quite see his point
of view. Yes. I agree with him--I mean about discipline. But I do think
you can't improve silly people when they get obstinate. If they can't
understand, they can't, and you can't make them. It couldn't be helped,
but I always sympathise with the girl in Rose's position. I wish you
could have heard her talk about her mother. She never mentioned her
father. Always her mother. She worshipped her mother. And yet she gave
you the idea too that she was mother to her mother, not her mother's
daughter."
Evelyn had several times before had casual chats with Miss Powler, on
Laundry affairs. But now he felt as if he were meeting her for the first
time. The interview had all the freshness of a completely new
revelation: like the rising of a curtain on a scene whose nature had
been almost completely unsuspected. She had said not a word against the
disciplinary Mr. Purkin. She had on the contrary supported his authority
without reserve. Withal she had somehow left Mr. Purkin stripped of
every shred of his moral prestige. She had been responding to the
humanity of the Rose problem, while for Mr. Purkin the humanity had had
no existence. She had faced the fact of the silliness of Rose's mother,
and yet had warmed to the passion of Rose for the foolish creature.
Further, Evelyn now had knowledge, in two cases, of her attitude towards
women under her control and direction, and there was in it no least
evidence of that harsh, almost resentful inflexibility which nearly
always characterised such a relation. And her attitude towards himself
was either distinguished by a tact approaching the miraculous, or was
the natural, unstudied results of a disposition both wise and kindly in
an exceptional degree; perhaps she had no need for the use of tact, did
not know, practically, what tact was. Evelyn began to think that he had
been under-estimating the physical qualities of her face and form. Five
minutes earlier he would have described her as comely. But now he was
ready to say that she was beautiful--because she must be beautiful,
because, being what she was, she could not be other than beautiful. He
had to enlarge his definition of feminine beauty in order to make room
for her in it. Then her foot. Perhaps large or largeish. But a girl like
her ought surely to have something to stand on! And were not small feet
absurd, a witness of decadence? Then her ankles. Not slim. Sturdy.
Suddenly he remembered the museum at Naples. An excursion which had not
revisited his memory for a dozen years. He saw the classical sculptures.
Not one of the ideal female figures in those sculptures had been given
slim ankles. Every ankle was robust, sturdy; the fashionable darlings of
to-day would call them thick. Yes, Miss Powler had classical ankles.
But he would not argue about her ankles, or her feet, or her figure, or
her face. In his reckoning of her he could afford to neglect their
values. What principally counted was her expression, her demeanour, her
tone, the gentle play of her features, and the aura of tranquil
benevolence and commonsense which radiated from her individuality. Mr.
Purkin was a clumsy simpleton. He had not known how to make her love
him. She did not love him. He did not deserve that she should love him.
Why in God's name should such a girl love a Mr. Purkin?
Then her accent; a detail, but he considered it. Miss Brury had acquired
a West End accent, with all the transmogrified vowel sounds of the West
End accent. Miss Powler's accent was not West End. Neither was it East
End, nor South. One might properly say that she had no accent. Was she
educated? Not possibly in the sense in which Miss Brury was educated.
But she was educated in human nature. Her imagination had been educated.
And she possessed accomplishments assuredly not possessed by Miss Brury.
Could she not dance, act, sing, direct a stage? Was not hers the energy
which had vitalised the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry Amateur Dramatic
(and Operatic) Society. It was no exaggeration to say that she was
better educated than Miss Brury. Anyhow she would be incapable of Miss
Brury's fatal hysteria.
Evelyn rose. Miss Powler rose. He moved. He stopped moving.
"I had another reason for calling to-day," he said, yielding happily to
a strong impulse. (Fourth fib.) "We may soon be needing someone rather
like you at the Palace." He smiled. "I can't say anything more just now.
But perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing if you considered whether you
would care for a change. Don't answer. Good-bye."
But her face answered, discreetly, in the affirmative. He departed. He
flattered himself that he had discovered the solution of two entirely
unrelated problems.
CHAPTER XI
SHADES
I
Evelyn's car had not moved three hundred yards from the Laundry before
it was stopped by an oncoming car which sinfully swerved across the
street, threatening a bonnet-to-bonnet collision. Fortunately this
amazing and inexcusable assault took place in a fairly empty space of
road. Evelyn did not at first realise what had happened. His chauffeur,
grandly conscious of being in the right, and with a strong sex-bias
which had persuaded him that women-drivers were capable of any enormity,
sat impassive and even silent, prepared to await developments and a
policeman.
Evelyn put his head out of his saloon window. The driver of the other
car smiled and waved a hand freely. It was Gracie Savott. Gracie backed
her car a few feet and then swerved forward again to her proper side and
drew up at the kerb. Evelyn, fully sharing for the moment Brench's
sex-bias, got down and walked across the street between approaching
trams to Gracie's car.
"I've written all my impressions of Smithfield," she gaily called out to
him as he passed in front of her and gained the security of the
pavement.
Evelyn was startled by her astonishing performance with the car, and so
resentful, that he could hardly bring himself to raise his hat.
"Was it to tell me that that you stopped me?" he asked stiffly. (By
heaven, what next?)
"Don't crush me." She pouted.
"How did you know it was my car?" The second question was softer than
the first.
"That's nicer," she said, smiling.
He thought that her tone was damned intimate. But fairness made him
immediately admit to himself that his own brusque tone had set the
example of precocious intimacy.
Gracie said:
"I asked the number of your car before I left the hotel. How else? And I
was about five minutes in getting it. They told me you'd probably be at
the Laundry, and they gave me the address. I had an instinct I might
meet you on the way; that was why I asked the number. And a good thing I
did!"
Evelyn's resentment was now submerged by a complete bewilderment. Was
the girl pursuing him, and if so to what end? His bewilderment in turn
was lost in dismay, in alarm for the demi-god Orcham's reputation. What
would his staff think of this young woman demanding his whereabouts and
the number of his car? What _could_ the staff think? He had been first
seen with her at 4 a.m. All the upper grades of the staff must have
heard that he had escorted her to Smithfield, brought her back, shown
her the ground-floor of the hotel at early morn. And now she had been
recklessly betraying an urgent desire to chase him, run him to earth,
and capture him! She, a girl, a notorious racing-motorist! Him, the
sedate, staid panjandrum of the Palace! It was incredible, unthinkable,
inconceivable. The whole hotel must be humming like telegraph-wires with
the scandalous tidings. Could he re-enter the hotel without
self-consciousness?
Clever of her to think of obtaining the number of the car before
starting!... Had she really intended to enquire for him at the
Laundry? And why? What was her business? And if her business was so
cursedly urgent, hadn't she enough ordinary gumption to telephone? She
was evidently an adventuress--in the sense that she loved adventure for
its own sake. She was a wild girl. Had she not positively invited him, a
stranger, to take her to Smithfield?
"Is anything the matter?" he asked.
"Not yet. But I must talk to you."
"Well?"
"Not here. We can't talk here," she said. "And not at the hotel either."
"Certainly not at the hotel," he silently agreed. And aloud: "Where,
then?"
"If you'll get in----"
"But what about my car?"
"Send it home. I'd come with you in your car, but I can't leave mine
here in the street, can I?"
Mist was gathering in South London. Dusk was falling. Trams with their
ear-shattering roar swept by, looming larger than life in the vagueness
of the mist.
Evelyn crossed the road again.
"I shan't want you any more to-night," he said with an exaggerated
nonchalance to Brench.
The imperturbable man touched his cap, and glided away.
"She looks a bit better now. I've had her cleaned," said Gracie as she
curved her own car into a side-street in order to turn back eastwards.
She was wearing the leather coat, and loose gloves to match it. She
pushed the car along at great speed among the traffic, driving with all
the assured skill of which Evelyn had had experience twelve hours
earlier in the day. Once again he was at her side. A few minutes ago he
had been in the prosaic industrial environment of the hotel Laundry. And
now he was under the adventurous hands of this incalculable girl on
another earth. He felt as helpless as a piece of flotsam in some swift
shadowy tide-way of that other earth. His masculinity rebelled, asserted
itself. He must somehow get control of the situation.
"Well?" he repeated, uncompromisingly.
"Not yet." Second time she had used those mysterious words. "I know a
place." Still more mysterious! And there was nothing the matter 'yet'!
Evelyn's thought was: "What has to be will be."
Philosophical? Worthy of a man? No! Only a pretence of the
philosophical. As for Gracie, she uttered not a syllable more. She drove
and drove.
In Westminster Bridge Road a large public-house gleamed in the twilight.
It had just opened to customers, and Labour was passing through its
swing-doors. And through the doors, and through the windows, frosted
into a pattern, could be seen glimpses of mahogany and glazed interiors,
with counters and bottles and beer-handles and shabby tipplers of both
sexes, and barmen in shirt-sleeves rolled up. The public-house stood on
a corner. Gracie twisted the car round the corner and stopped it,
opposite a protruding sign which said "Shades."
"Here it is," said Gracie, with a slight movement towards him which
indicated that he was expected to get out of the car.
"Here?" he questioned.
"Yes."
"Do you know the place?" he questioned further.
"No. But I happened to notice it as I drove down. It calls itself the
Prince of Wales's Feathers."
"Do you mean you want to go in here?"
"Yes. To talk. Why not? _We couldn't have a safer place._"
Evelyn had never entered a London public-house. He shrugged his
shoulders--those shoulders which she had admired. His faculty of
amazement was worn out. He descended. Gracie locked the steering. Then
she glanced into the body of the car. Nothing there to tempt thieves.
"That ought to be all right," she murmured.
II
She stood at the heavy, narrow double doors, expectant that he should
open them for her. He pushed hard against one of them. As soon as Gracie
had squeezed through the door banged back on Evelyn. Then he had to push
it a second time. He too squeezed through, and the door gave a short
series of quick bangs, diminuendo.
A small room. A counter in front of them. Shelves full of bottles behind
the counter. No barman at the counter. To the left a glazed mahogany
partition, very elaborate. A panelled mahogany wall opposite the
partition, and another opposite the counter, and advertisements of
alcohol across the panels. A very heavily sculptured ceiling. A sanded
floor. Along the two panelled walls ran two mahogany benches, with a
small round barrel, its top stained in circles, at the angle. A powerful
odour of ale. Sound of rough voices, strident or muttering, over the
curved summit of the partition.
"Oh! What a horrible lovely place!" said Gracie, sitting down on a bench
near the barrel. "But it's exactly what I thought it would be."
A barman appeared at the counter.
"This is mine," said Gracie to Evelyn, and to the barman: "Two light
sherries, please." And to Evelyn: "That right?"
"Right you are, miss," said the barman with cheerful heartiness, and
reached down a bottle from one of the shelves.
Evelyn had been afraid that she might order beer; but she had ordered
the only correct, the only possible, thing; sherry had at least an air
of decorum; also it was the only wholesome apéritif. The girl knew her
way about; he supposed that all these girls did; he supposed it was
proper that they should, and although he did not quite like it he strove
to broaden his views concerning girls in order to like it. "A bit too
much of the oriental attitude about me about young women!" he thought.
"Here you are, sir," said the barman, addressing Evelyn this time. And
Evelyn had to fetch the too full glasses from the counter.
"One and four, sir."
Evelyn paid.
The counter was wet with sherry. The barman rubbed it hard with a towel
that had once been clean. The hearty, hail-fellow-well-met barman in his
shirt-sleeves, to say nothing of the dirty towel, made a rude contrast
with the manners which obtained at the celebrated Imperial Palace
American bar, where the celebrated head-barman was a strict teetotaller
with a head like that of a Presbyterian minister and a dispensing
knowledge in the head of a hundred and thirteen different cocktails. At
the Palace drinks were ceremoniously brought to seated customers by
young men in immaculate white jackets--and Evelyn knew the exact sum per
dozen debited by the Laundry to the hotel for the washing and getting-up
of the white jackets. And no waiter there would venture to name the
price of a drink until asked.
"You give me that twopence," said Gracie, fumbling in her bag, as Evelyn
sat down with his change in his hand. "And I'll give you eighteenpence."
He accepted the suggestion without argument. Why should not girls pay if
they chose? As for the particular case of Gracie, she probably spent on
herself the equivalent of Evelyn's entire income, which nevertheless
yielded a considerable super-tax to the State. Evidently her big baggage
had arrived at the Palace, for she was wearing another frock and still
another hat. Beneath and above the stern chic of the leather coat was
visible the frivolous chic of the frock and the hat.
"Yours!" said Gracie, raising her glass. "You aren't cross, are you?"
"No. Why should I be?"
"I don't know," said Gracie. "But you look so severe I'm frightened."
"Take more than that to frighten you," Evelyn retorted, forcing a grim
smile.
"Not a bad sherry this," he added, enquiring with his brain into the
precise sensations of his palate. He was proud that he and no other
selected the wines for the Palace. He recalled some good phrases from
his formal lectures to the wine-waiters upon their own subject.
"But it is rather a jolly place, isn't it?" said Gracie. "Do come down
off the roof to the ground-floor."
He smiled less grimly. Why not be honest? It was indeed rather a jolly
place: strange, exotic, romantic. And he did like the freedoms of the
barman, after the retired, artificial, costive politenesses of the
Palace service. He saw charm even in the dirty towel. (And she had
discovered the place, and had had the enterprise to enter it.) He was
seeing London, indigenous London. The Palace was no part of London. Why
not for a change yield to the attraction of the moment? Of course if he
were caught sitting with a smart young woman in a corner of the Prince
of Wales's Feathers in Westminster Bridge Road, his friends or his
customers or his heads of departments might lift an eye-brow. But he
could not be caught. Moreover the Feathers would be the height of
respectability to ninety-nine decent Londoners out of a hundred. And
even if it were not respectable--well, Gracie was above respectability.
Violet Powler would not be. But Gracie was. She had robust ideas about
things. He was bound to admire her robust taste, and her adventurous
enterprise. Violet Powler would shrink from the invitation of the
Feathers. He himself had shrunk from it. He suffered from masculine
timidity and conventionality. Gracie and her sort had something to teach
him.
"You know the telephone-message you sent to daddy this morning." Gracie
began her business. "Well, daddy was fast asleep, and it came to me."
She told him quite frankly what she had done. "That's why I wanted to
see you." Here she lit a cigarette, and Evelyn, determined to surpass
her, lit a cigar. She explained to him her father's Napoleonic
sensitiveness. "I'd like you to do something. I couldn't bear any
trouble between you and daddy," she finished, with eagerness. Her rich,
changing voice fell enchantingly on his ear.
What did that mean: couldn't bear any trouble between him and Sir Henry?
Did it mean that any such trouble might compromise the relations between
her and himself, and that _that_ was what she couldn't bear? Odd,
flattering, insidious, specious implication! He leaned closer to her:
"What would you like me to do?"
Intimacy was suddenly increased. How was it that they had become so
intimate in a dozen hours of spasmodic intercourse? He knew. It was
because they had gone off together on a romantic excursion in what was
for her the middle of the night. One visit to strange Smithfield before
dawn would create more familiarity, demolish more barriers between soul
and soul, than ten exquisite dinners exquisitely served within the
trammels of a polite code.... Never again could they be mere
acquaintances.
"Couldn't you ask daddy to dinner to-night--and me? He'd appreciate it
frightfully."
Evelyn was astounded afresh. What on earth would the incredible girl say
next? He could not phrase a reply.
Fortunately at this juncture four men entered the bar. They were clad
somewhat in the style of Mr. Cyril Purkin, but more flashily. They had
glittering watch-chains, jewelled rings, rakish hats and neckties and
tie-pins, and assurance. If not prosperous, they looked prosperous. They
glanced casually at Evelyn and Gracie, and glanced away. Men of the
world, whom vast experience of the world had carried far beyond the
narrow curiosity of hard-working persons--persons who had to look twice
at sixpence. Evelyn was decidedly more interested in them than they were
interested in him and Gracie. They leaned against the counter, called
'Jock,' 'Jock,' and when Jock came they ordered four double whiskies.
They were discussing the day's racing. Then they talked about the secret
significance of 'acceptances.' They sipped the whiskies.
One of them, the fattest, having sipped, and gazed at his glass, said in
a meditative hoarse voice:
"When I've had a drop over night, do you know what I do? I get up early
and I go down to my cellar in my nighty, and I draw myself a port-glass
of gin, and I drink that and it puts me right. Yes. That puts me right."
"Well, give me Eno every time," said another gravely.
At length in a murmur Evelyn answered Gracie's suggestion:
"No."
"No?"
"No. That wouldn't suit my book at all. Your father would misunderstand
it."
A pause.
"He'd think I'd mean what I shouldn't mean," Evelyn added.
"I see," said Gracie. "I hadn't thought of that." She did see. "Well, if
daddy asks _you_ to dinner to-night, will you come?" Gracie demanded.
Why shouldn't he? If anybody's pitch was likely to be queered by the
invitation and the acceptance thereof, it would be Sir Henry's, nor
Evelyn's. But what a girl! What an incomprehensible feminine, unfeminine
creature!
"Yes," said Evelyn. "With pleasure. But in the restaurant. Not upstairs.
But he won't ask me?"
"Oh! Won't he? You leave that to me."
A horn tooted outside.
"That's children playing with the car!" Gracie exclaimed, jumping up and
draining her sherry.
Evelyn rose quietly also. He laughed. Gracie laughed. Yes, how
thrillingly exotic she seemed in the heavy, frowsy, smoke-laden,
fume-poisoned interior! They hurried out like children merrily excited
by the prospect of a new escapade. The real children round the car ran
off, bounding and shrieking with mischief.
"We may as well go," Gracie suggested.
"Yes, I ought to be going."
Near the junction of Bridge Street and Whitehall Evelyn asked Gracie to
stop.
"Why?"
"Because I want to get out," said Evelyn.
"But I'll drive you to the hotel."
"No, thanks!" Evelyn answered very drily and firmly. And got out. He had
no intention of being seen by his door-porters driving up to the
Imperial Palace in Gracie's car with Gracie at the wheel. It simply
would not do. And Gracie yielded with a sweet, acquiescent, almost
humble smile. That was the only way to treat young women. Firmness. Let
them be as capricious and arbitrary as they chose; what they really
liked was to be compelled to obey.
Having moved forward a couple of score yards, Gracie halted the car
again and waited for Evelyn to come up with it.
"You're afraid of being seen with me in my car," she said, smiling not
humbly but mischievously, half-resentfully.
"I am." Evelyn was blunt and careless, but secretly a trifle surprised
by the accuracy of her thought-reading.
Gracie drove on. This curt exchange seemed to Evelyn to be further
startling proof of intimacy.
He took deep breaths. He was conscious of a much-increased sense of
being alive.
CHAPTER XII
DAUGHTER AND FATHER
I
Gracie had no sooner entered her sitting-room at the Imperial Palace,
leaving the door ajar as she left most doors ajar, than her father
pushed open the door and peeped in. She was just dropping her leather
coat on to a chair, which was already encumbered with a rug. Sir Henry
inferred from the coat that his daughter had been out in the car. He
wondered why, but asked no question. The relations between these two
were peculiar, yet logical enough, considering their characters. Before
he got his title his wife had divorced him, and obtained the custody of
the child, then aged seventeen. She obtained also an alimony of five
thousand a year. She had tried for ten thousand, and failed. Five
thousand or ten thousand: the figure had no practical interest for Henry
Savott, but he had fought her ruthlessly.
After three weeks of living with her mother, Gracie had walked into her
father's office one day, and said: "Daddy, I understand now."
"Understand what?" "You know." Henry Savott had looked harshly at her
and growled: "Better late than never." Gracie had then announced that
she had not the least intention of living any longer with her mother.
"I'm not going to be in anybody's 'custody'! What a word!" Henry Savott
had reminded her that she was a minor, and that the decree of the High
Court of Justice explicitly put her in her mother's power. Gracie,
frequently a realist, had merely laughed. "I'd love to see the Court
that could make me live with anybody I don't want to live with. I'm
coming to live with you, daddy."
Henry Savott had been tremendously flattered. His daughter's unsolicited
testimonial was the finest gift ever bestowed upon him, and he instantly
saw that it would do much to restore his damaged prestige in the social
world. He offered objections to Gracie's plan, but not convincingly. His
maiden sister, who hated his wife, was induced to take theoretical
charge over his household.
Gracie had enjoyed freedom from the very beginning of her new life; for
her father was absorbed in his vast financial schemes, and her aunt, a
hypochondriac with a magnificent constitution, was absorbed in the
complex ritual of the treatment of her imagined diseases. As a rule
hypochondriacs live for ever. But Miss Savott proved not to be immortal.
She died suddenly, untimely, of a malady whose existence had concealed
itself even from the hypochondriac's ferreting morbidness. Attired in
black on the evening of the funeral, father and daughter had had one of
their short, clear, monosyllabic conversations, the result of which was
that Gracie at twenty became the head of Sir Henry's household. The
unspoken but perfectly understood undertaking on Sir Henry's part was:
"Don't make a fool of yourself, and I won't make a fool of myself or of
you. You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone." Twenty years earlier
such an arrangement would have been regarded as immoral, but the Savotts
were of those rather rare persons who look often at the calendar, not to
know the day of the month, but to remind themselves of the Annus Domini.
And the arrangement, being between two realists, worked. It suited both
of them. Both possessed the faculty of not seeing what it might be
inconvenient to see. Sir Henry in his old-fashioned way sometimes felt
transient qualms; Gracie never.
Sir Henry had an immense admiration for his daughter, and especially for
her worldly commonsense. He was proud of her racing achievements, which
had cost him a lot of money in the building of monstrously engined cars.
In every department of expenditure she was an extremely costly child.
But he was free; she was free; she was a capable hostess; and domestic
extravagance never disturbed him; for he had a sense of proportion. The
miscarriage of a financial operation in the City might well in a day
reduce his resources by more than Gracie could possibly squander in
twenty years.
Such was their situation, and it explains why Sir Henry hid whatever
curiosity he might have felt about the leather coat.
Two books lay on the floor of the littered, luxurious room. Sir Henry
picked them up; for though he had learnt that his daughter's enormous
untidiness was incurable, his own instinct for order would out.
"The Bible and Shakspere," he murmured. "Still?"
"The Bible and Shakspere still. And I don't know which is best," said
Gracie.
"Why this surprising passion for the classics?" he twitted her.
"I only like them--that's all," said Gracie negligently. "I'm just
reading the Psalms."
"Why the Psalms?" he continued to twit the girl. "I should have thought
the biography of David would be more in your line--as a contemporary
young woman."
"The Psalms _are_ David's biography," Gracie replied.
He reflected:
"How does the kid think of these remarks of hers. Something in that. I
never thought of it." He was not an ardent reader.
"Oh!" he said.
"Yes. The finest thing in all the Bible is in the Psalms."
"Oh!" he repeated, smiling. "What's that? I'd like to hear."
Gracie quoted with a certain solemnity:
"'Be still, and know that I am God.' _Be still._"
Sombrely contemplative, she gazed at her parent, so dapper, so
physically fresh in his age, so earthly, so active in his unending
material schemes, so deaf and blind to the spiritual, so regardless of
all that was incalculable by an adding machine. He fancied that her eyes
were fixed upon his magnificent, regular, white teeth, which she had
once called cruel, and instinctively he closed his lips on them, thus
ceasing to smile.
"Shall I ever get to the bottom of this kid's mind?" he asked himself,
puzzled, uneasy, as it were intimidated; but still admiring. He dropped
the books on to a table.
II
Then there was a second swift disconcerting change in Gracie's mood.
"What are you going to do to-night, daddy?"
"I'm going to bed. You know I never do anything the first day,
anywhere."
She seemed not to be listening to him.
"Because," she continued, "I've just seen Mr. Orcham."
"I'm waiting to hear from him," said Sir Henry drily.
"He's only this minute come back into the hotel. Been out all day."
"How do you know?"
"Don't I say I've just seen him?"
"You seem to be very friendly with him?" Sir Henry quizzed her.
"Oh! I am! He took me to Smithfield Market this morning."
"He asked you to go to Smithfield with him!"
"No. I asked him to take me."
"When?"
"After you went off to bed."
"I hope he didn't think I'd put you up to it," said Sir Henry,
disturbed.
"How could he have thought that? I didn't know he was going to
Smithfield until a minute before you went off. I'm glad I asked him. It
was most frightfully amusing. And if I'd gone to bed I shouldn't have
been able to sleep. It filled in the time perfectly. I was thinking you
might invite him to dinner to-night."
"I invite him to dinner! And in his own hotel! No fear! The last thing I
want is for him to think I'm running after him. You can understand that.
If he doesn't suggest anything, after my message to him, _I_ shan't
suggest anything."
Gracie said with absolute tranquillity:
"Then you go to bed, and I'll ask him. I like him." Sir Henry exercised
the self-restraint which experience of Gracie had taught him.
"He won't accept."
"I'll bet ten to one he will."
"In the restaurant? He won't."
"Well, we'll see."
Sir Henry reconsidered the position. If Orcham accepted an invitation
from Gracie alone, it would mean that he might be getting wrong notions
into his head. If he declined, undesirable complications might ensue.
Sir Henry went to the door.
"You ask him for both of us. Nine o'clock. Send a note down. Let me know
the reply." Sir Henry departed without waiting for Gracie to speak.
"Father," she ran to the door and called out after him in the corridor:
"What's his Christian name?"
She wrote, in her large hand: "Dear Mr. Evelyn Orcham. Father and I
would be so glad if you would dine with us to-night in the restaurant.
Nine o'clock. Please don't disappoint us. Yours sincerely, G. S."
She rang for the waiter.
Mrs. O'Riordan, the head-housekeeper, brightly sustaining the cares of
her kingdom, entered, in front of the waiter, to pay one of those
state-visits which she vouchsafed only to very important guests or very
angry guests. She enquired whether Gracie's comfort and satisfaction
were complete and without flaw. Gracie, recognising at once a superior
member of the hotel-hierarchy, invited Mrs. O'Riordan to sit down. The
two had quite a long chat. Then Gracie lavished more than an hour and a
half upon her evening toilette, melancholy Tessa helping her as well as
a bandaged wrist permitted.
CHAPTER XIII
GREEN PARROT
I
Evelyn entered the foyer at one minute to nine. Certainly one of his
gods was Punctuality, though there were greater gods in his pantheon.
When master of his movements he was never late, nor early; his knowledge
of the hour, and of the minute of the hour, was almost continuous.
A thin stream of guests was passing from the great hall through the
foyer into the restaurant. Other guests were sipping cocktails at the
small tables in the foyer; and still others were seated on the sofas,
contributing naught to the night's receipts of the foyer, but
safeguarding their stomachs. Not a single guest recognised Evelyn; Mr.
Cousin would have been recognised and saluted by several of them;
Evelyn's personality was more recondite. Only the knowing ones knew that
Mr. Cousin, the manager, had a superior.
In the lounge were two cloak-room attendants, knee-breeched and
gorgeous, who looked as if they had escaped from the Court of the Prince
Regent, two cocktail pages in white and gold, a foyer-waiter dressed as
a waiter, and two head-waiters of the restaurant, who stood on the lower
stairs to receive diners; for every arriving party was personally
conducted to its table and not abandoned by the conductor until the
head-waiter of the table had received it into his hands. All these
employees were immediately and acutely aware of the unusual presence of
Evelyn, but, under standing orders, they ignored it: not an easy feat.
At nine o'clock Sir Henry Savott appeared; he glanced at his watch, and
his austere face betrayed a high consciousness that punctuality was the
politeness of emperors. He descried Evelyn. The two smiled, mutually
approached, shook hands, and as it were took positions for a duel.
"I was just going to telephone up to you, and suggest an appointment for
to-morrow," said Evelyn genially, "when I got your daughter's most kind
invitation."
"Very good of you to accept at such short notice," said Sir Henry. "Have
a cocktail?"
"Yes, thanks," said Evelyn simply, and indicated an empty table.
"What's the matter with the bar?" asked Sir Henry. "I hear you've had it
redecorated."
"But Miss--er--Gracie?"
"Gracie has never been known to be less than a quarter of an hour late
for lunch or dinner," said Sir Henry. "Like most women she has a
disorderly mind. Not disordered," he added.
The two males exchanged a complacent, condescending look which relegated
the entire female sex to its proper place, and strolled side by side up
the stairs, along the broad corridor which led past the grill-room into
the American bar.
The cocktail department comprised two large rooms: the first was
permitted to ladies; the second, containing the majestic bar, was
forbidden to them. By a common impulse Sir Henry and his guest for the
evening walked without hesitation into the second room and sat down in a
corner. Each waited for the other to open. Neither knew that the mind of
the other was preoccupied with one sole image: that of Gracie. Evelyn
was thinking: "She said she'd fix it, and she's fixed it." Sir Henry was
thinking: "What's the meaning of this whim for getting this fellow to
dinner?... 'Be still, and know that I am God.' Good God!" (But naïve
pride was mingled with his non-comprehension.)
Sir Henry glanced around with feigned curiosity at the flood-lighting,
the silvern ceiling, the Joseph's-coat walls decorated in rhomboidal
shapes which bar-frequenters described as cubistic or futuristic or
both. He did not like it.
"Very original," he commented. "Charming. I expect it was good for a bit
of useful publicity, this was."
"It was," said Evelyn. "Change from the traditional British bar, eh?" He
saw himself and Gracie incredibly hobnobbing in the Prince of Wales's
Feathers in Westminster Bridge Road.
A white-jacketed, black-trousered youth ceremoniously approached.
"Maddix," Evelyn murmured to him before Sir Henry could speak.
The youth hurried away.
There were four solemn revellers at the bar, and a priest and an acolyte
behind it. The ascetic priest was a thin, short, middle-aged man with a
semi-bald cranium, a few close-cropped grey hairs, and an enormous dome
of a forehead above grey eyes. Leaving the bar and his customers to the
care of the acolyte, the priest came tripping with dignity across the
room and halted in silence at Evelyn's elbow.
"Well, Maddix, what's your latest? Apollo?" Evelyn asked, hardly
smiling.
"The Apollo is quite new, sir. But my latest I've christened Green
Parrot. I only really finished it last night."
"Not on the market yet?"
"Not as you might say, sir."
"Well, Sir Henry, will you try a Green Parrot?"
"Good evening, Sir Henry," said Maddix, his tone a mixture of deference
and self-respect.
"Why of course it's Maddix!" Sir Henry exclaimed, holding out his hand.
"How are you, Maddix? Haven't seen you since God knows when--at the
Plaza in New York. You were a very famous figure there."
Maddix took the offered hand with reserve.
"Yes, sir," he agreed placidly. "I suppose I was. I suppose I was the
best-known barman in New York for twenty years. Prohibition and Mr.
Orcham brought me back home."
"And how are the boys?" Sir Henry enquired.
"Which boys, Sir Henry? The general bar population?"
"No. Your two sons of course." A swift change transformed the impassive
countenance of the legendary world-figure, the formidable man whose
demeanour divided the general bar population of the two greatest
capitals in history into two groups, the group which ventured to address
him as 'Maddix,' with or without familiar additions, and the group which
did not venture. The countenance relaxed and showed human emotion.
"Thank you for remembering them, Sir Henry. The eldest is still over
there. Fur trade. Seems to be dollars in it. The other one's with me and
his mother, here."
"And what's he doing?"
"Well, Sir Henry, you may think it queer. But I've got a tennis-court
back of my little house at Fulham, and the boy's gone mad on tennis. He
means to be a professional player. His mother isn't very pleased. But
_I_ say, 'What can you do--if he's made up his mind?' Between parents
and children things aren't what they used to be, are they, Sir Henry?"
"They are not," the millionaire concurred, thinking of Gracie.
"A Green Parrot then, Sir Henry?"
"I'll risk it."
"And you, sir?"
Evelyn said:
"Soft."
"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Maddix. "I should prefer to mix that Green
Parrot myself." He went away.
"A character!" observed Sir Henry. "How did you manage to get him away
from New York?"
"I saw him once or twice when I was over there," Evelyn answered
placidly. "He said he'd like to come home. I believed him. Considering
Prohibition! A man who can live for twenty years behind a New York bar
and never pick up an American accent--and never use a word of American
slang--well, there must be something incurably English about him. I told
him I had the finest American bar in the world, and I wanted the finest
barman in the world to take charge of it. He came. Of course he gets the
salary of an Under-Secretary of State. So he ought to."
"Not quite the cocktail hour here, is it?" said Sir Henry, again
glancing around at the large, half-empty room.
"No. It's too late and too early. But it'll soon be the liqueur hour.
Extraordinary how many men prefer to come in here for a drink at the end
of a meal. They feel more at home near a bar, even if they don't stand
at it."
II
Two fat men in lounge-suits wandered in. The first word that Evelyn
caught in their self-conscious conversation was the word 'Acceptances.'
He knew and cared absolutely nothing about racing; but he had the wit to
gather that Acceptances were one of the few human phenomena capable of
making all men kin. The talk among the leaners against the bar suddenly
rose to loudness. "And _I_ say that gin is the----" he heard, from an
affected and disputatious voice. (He would have liked to hear a profound
remark concerning women from some other quarter of the room; but he was
disappointed.) He thought: "There was a quality about that wigwam in the
Westminster Bridge Road that this place hasn't got. The free-and-easy!
This place is too stiff." And he began to wonder how the Prince of
Wales's Feathers' quality could be added to the qualities of the
Imperial Palace American bar. "No!" he decided. "Couldn't be done.
Wouldn't do, either." But he regretted its absence from the too correct
and august atmosphere of the place.
Then a procession moved from the bar in the direction of Evelyn and Sir
Henry: an acolyte solemnly bearing a tray upon which were two small
glasses, one green, one yellow, followed by the priestly Maddix. Evelyn
took the yellow glass, Sir Henry the green. The acolyte bowed and
retired. Maddix stood, awaiting in silence the verdict of Sir Henry.
Evelyn absurdly wished that Maddix, with rolled-up shirt-sleeves
exposing hairy forearms, might have exclaimed freely: "Well, what abaht
it, guv'nor?"
Observing that Sir Henry's eyes were on Evelyn's glass, not on his own,
Maddix allowed himself to remark:
"Mr. Orcham is not much for cocktails."
"I'm much more for cocktails than you are, Maddix," Evelyn said. And to
Sir Henry: "Maddix is a strict teetotaller."
"Then how do you manage to invent these things?" asked Sir Henry, gazing
now at the green glass.
"I taste. I never swallow."
Sir Henry both tasted and swallowed, and, putting on the air of a
connoisseur, amiably delivered judgment: "Very original. Very good."
Maddix bowed his gratitude--a bow hardly perceptible; he had divined
that to the millionaire all cocktails were more or less the same
cocktail. The experience of decades, the inventive imagination of a
genuine creator, and some good luck, had gone into the conceiving of the
Green Parrot cocktail, and the millionaire recked not, sympathised not,
understood not! He had been friendly enough about the human offspring of
the cocktail genius, but to the miracles of cocktail art God had decreed
that he should be insensible. As a fact Maddix did not know more than
ten men in London who truly comprehended the great classical principles
of the cocktail. Evelyn was one of the ten.
Sir Henry began to talk to Evelyn. Maddix sedately walked away, the
artist sardonic because unappreciated by a barbaric public.
Presently Evelyn glanced at his watch.
"Perhaps we ought to go back to the foyer."
"Lots of time," said Sir Henry soothingly.
At that moment the whole room, from the bar to the furthest corner,
became agitated with a unique agitation, and every masculine face seemed
to be saying: "Strange things have happened, but this is the strangest."
Oblivious of the printed notice prominently displayed at the entrance, a
woman was intruding. And not merely a woman, but a young woman, a
beautiful woman, proud of bearing, clad in a magnificent frock of mauve
and pink, and glinting with jewels. And neither apology nor challenge in
her mien. Maddix started instinctively into protest at this desecration;
then stopped, thinking: "A greater than me is here. Let him deal with
the unparalleled outrage." And yet the outrage was delicious to every
beholding male, even to Maddix himself. The woman went straight to
Evelyn and Sir Henry, who both rose quickly. Sir Henry at any rate felt
that she must be removed at once. Evelyn did not care whether she was
removed or not: in the Palace he was above all laws; the one law was his
own approval.
"I got tired of waiting for you in the foyer," the smiling woman greeted
them with entirely unresentful charm. "So I asked where you were."
The two men were like sixth-form boys convicted of an impropriety.
"Been waiting long?" asked Sir Henry.
"Oh no! Not more than an hour. This place is more old-fashioned than I
thought it was." Such was her indication of awareness that she was where
she knew she had no right to be. "I think a public-house would be more
up-to-date than this. I know I should adore public-houses. Don't you
adore them, Mr. Orcham?"
"I'm not very well acquainted with public-houses," said Evelyn.
"Never been in one?"
"Oh yes. Once."
"How long ago?"
"Oh! Not very long ago."
Evelyn saw in her something of the woman who at the banked corners of
the Brooklands track had many times staked her life on the accuracy of
an instantaneous appraisal of positions, speeds and distances. He
perceived that she liked his replies. He admired her tremendously. He
was dazzled by her. He knew that she knew he was dazzled by her. Sir
Henry also was somewhat overset, and quite incapable of reproaching her
for the wilful audacity of her invasion. She had put him in the wrong.
She triumphantly led out the two men as though they had been captives to
an Amazon. She vanished from the view of the room, and to all the
seated, entranced males the room seemed to be suddenly darkened.
CHAPTER XIV
VOLIVIA
I
In the American bar the hour for cocktails had nearly finished, but
guests were still drinking them, though perhaps with more refined
gestures, in the foyer; and people were still passing down through the
foyer into the restaurant.
Dinner-time at the Imperial Palace, if still not as late as in Venice,
Paris, Madrid, was getting later, and nearer and nearer to supper-time.
A crowded, confused scene of smart frocks, dowdy frocks, jewels genuine
and sham, black coats, white shirts, white table-cloths, silver, steel,
glass, coloured chairs, coloured carpets, parquet in the midst, mirrors,
melody, and light glinting through the crystal of chandeliers.
A tall and graceful youngish man, with an expression of gentle smiling
melancholy on his dark face, greeted Gracie, Sir Henry and Evelyn on the
lower steps, and led them to a table on the edge of the empty parquet.
Having seated them, he stood with bent, attentive head at Sir Henry's
elbow.
"You're doing some business here to-night, Cappone," said Evelyn, losing
the self-consciousness which usually afflicted him on the rare occasions
when as a diner he descended those broad steps into the restaurant.
Cappone's response was a soft triumphant smile. Sir Henry, always
self-conscious at first in a public place, concealed his constraint as
well as he could under a Napoleonic brusquerie. Gracie, stared at by a
hundred eyes until she sat down, was just as much at her ease as a bride
at a wedding. Created by heaven to be a cynosure, rightly convinced that
she was the best-dressed woman in the great, glittering, humming room,
her spirit floated on waves of admiration as naturally as a goldfish in
water. Evelyn, impressed, watched her surreptitiously as she dropped on
to the table an inlaid vanity-case which had cost her father a couple of
hundred pounds.
"Same girl," thought Evelyn, "who was hobnobbing with me in a leather
coat about two minutes since in the Prince of Wales's Feathers!"
Surely in the wide world that night there could not be anything to beat
her! Idle, luxurious rich, but a masterpiece! Maintained in splendour by
the highly skilled and expensive labour of others, materially useless to
society, she yet justified herself by her mere appearance. And she knew
it, and her conscience was clear.
Mr. Cappone having accepted three menus from a man who stood behind him
with a tablet in his hand, distributed them among his guests.
"Well now, let's see," said Sir Henry, applying eye-glasses to his nose,
and paused. "Oh! Look here, Cappone, I think we'll leave it all to you."
"Very well, Sir Henry. Thank you," said Mr. Cappone, gathering up the
menus, and departing with his subaltern.
"That's right, isn't it, Orcham?" Sir Henry questioned.
"You couldn't have done better, Savott," said Evelyn, curt and
confident.
"I suppose he's the _head_-waiter," said Gracie, indicating Mr. Cappone.
"Head-waiter!" Evelyn exclaimed, with an intonation somewhat sardonic,
laughing drily. "I'm glad he didn't hear you. There are thirty
head-waiters in this room. No. Cappone is the manager of the
restaurant." The more Gracie dazzled him, the more was he determined to
keep these Savotts in their place. After all, was he not old enough to
be the girl's father? It was as if he resented her dominion equally with
her ignorance of hotel terminology.
"And all he has to do is to look romantic and be exquisitely polite?"
Gracie went on, quite wilfully unaware of her place.
"Yes. That's all," Evelyn agreed, and paused. "Well, there may be one or
two other things he has to do. Settle the menus with the chef. Attend
conferences. Watch the graph-curves of the average bill every day.
Explain satisfactorily the occasional presence of a worm in a
lettuce--not so simple, that! Know the names and private histories and
weaknesses and vanities and doings of every regular customer. Talk four
languages. Keep the peace among his staff over the distribution of the
tips. Know exactly how every dish is cooked. Persuade every customer
that he has got the best table in the place. Prevent customers who
prefer the _prix fixe_ from choosing more expensive things than the
price will stand. Find new waiters, because even waiters die and quarrel
and so on. That's one of his worries, the waiter question. You can't
bring foreigners into the country, and English lads simply refuse to go
abroad to finish their education. Cappone says that English waiters
would be as good as any, and better in some ways; only there's one thing
they can't learn, and it's the most important thing."
"Ha! What's that?" Sir Henry demanded.
"That the customer is always right, of course. It's that terrible
British sense of justice! Well, those are a few of the odd trifles that
our graceful friend has to think about, besides looking romantic,"
Evelyn ended with a faint sneer. He thought: "Why am I talking like
this? Why have I got the note wrong?"
"It's perfectly thrilling," said Gracie, with an enchanting, excited,
modest smile.
Evelyn said to himself:
"She understands. She has imagination. More than daddy has."
"Yes, yes," Sir Henry grunted absently, his inquisitive small eyes
prying into the far corners of the restaurant.
"Do tell us some more," Gracie pleaded, leaning eagerly towards Evelyn
across the table, her beautiful face all lighted up.
"About waiters?"
"About anything. Yes, about waiters." Evelyn's tone had apparently not
in the least ruffled her. She was admiring him. She was kissing the rod.
"Well," said Evelyn. "Cappone says that English waiters look very smart
in the street, off duty, but in the restaurant they don't care how they
look, whereas his precious Italians look very smart on duty, and don't
look like anything on earth in the street. I mean the _commis_ of
course, the youths in the long aprons. Not the _chefs de rang_. English
or not, they _have_ to look smart on duty."
He forced Sir Henry to meet his gaze. These people had got to know the
sort of man they'd asked to dinner, and he would teach them. If daddy
fancied he was going to buy the Imperial Palace for nineteen and
eleven----
Mr. Cappone reappeared, to lay an orchid on the table in front of
Gracie, who glanced up at him, and without a spoken word gave the
Restaurant-manager such a smile as Evelyn had never before seen. And Mr.
Cappone gave her a smile, respectful and yet adoringly masculine, that
made Evelyn say to himself: "I couldn't smile like that to save my
life."
"He's a dear," Gracie murmured, picking up the exotic flower. And to
Evelyn: "Go on. Go on."
But at that moment a waiter arrived with a dish of caviare on a
carriage, and another with three tiny glasses on a tray.
"Hello! What's this?" asked Sir Henry, suddenly attentive.
"Vodka," said Evelyn. "I hope it's vodka." And his tone said: "No doubt
you thought it was gin."
The repast began. They were all hungry. The unique caviare, the
invaluable vodka, rapidly worked a miracle in the immortal spirit of Sir
Henry. Gracie ate and drank with exclamatory delight. As for Evelyn, his
testy mood faded away in fifteen seconds. The table now participated in
the festivity of the great room. God reigned. The earth was perfect. No
stain upon it, no sorrow, no injustice, no death! And life was worth
living. Beauty abounded. Civilisation was at its fullest bloom. There
was no yesterday, and there would be no to-morrow. And all because the
pickled ovarian parts of a fish, and a liquid distilled from plain rye,
were smoothly passing into the alimentary tracts of the three ravenous
diners.
II
Then in the orchestra a drum rolled solemnly, warningly, even
menacingly; and everyone looked towards the orchestra, expectant. The
orchestra, having for more than an hour drawn out of a series of
Hungarian melodies the last wild, melancholy sweetness, began to play
Russian dance music. The high curtains at the end of the room moved
mysteriously apart, revealing a blaze of light behind. In the midst of
this amber radiance stood a dark woman, half-clad or quarter-clad in
black and white: costume of an athlete, ceasing abruptly at the arm-pits
and the top of the thighs. She was neither beautiful nor slim nor
elegant as she stood there, nor was her performer's smile better than
good-natured.
"So you've fallen for it," said Gracie, under the loud applause which
welcomed the apparition.
"Fallen for what?" asked Evelyn.
"Cabaret."
"We've had a cabaret here for two years," said Evelyn.
It was true, however, that for a very long time the Imperial Palace had
set its face against cabaret. The Palace had been above cabaret, was too
refined and dignified for cabaret, needed no cabaret, flourishing as it
did on its prestige, its food, and the distinction of its clientèle. But
Evelyn had recognised that the Time-Spirit was irresistible, and cabaret
had come to the Palace. Of course not the ordinary run of cabaret.
Inconceivable that the Palace cabaret should be that!
Soup and hock were unobtrusively delivered at Sir Henry's table. Waiters
on the edges of the room were unobtrusively inserting new tables between
tables.
The woman stepped into the centre of the dancing-floor with all the mien
of a victor; for, although this was only her third evening, she knew
that she was a success. Everybody knew that she was a success. Waiters
glanced aside at her as they did their work. In the distances guests
were standing up to watch. In two days the tale of Volivia's exhibition
of herself had spread like a conflagration through what is called the
town--without the help of the press. When she opened Volivia had been
nobody. Now, because she had so unmistakably succeeded at the Palace,
she could get contracts throughout the entire western world of luxury.
Her muscles knew it as they contracted and expanded, making ripples on
her olive skin.
She flowed into a dance, which soon developed into a succession of
abrupt, short, violent motions. Ugly! Evelyn was witnessing the turn for
the first time. He was puzzled. "The public is an enigma," he thought.
"They like it; but what do they like in it? I wouldn't look twice at it
myself." Nevertheless the woman held his gaze. He snatched a glance at
Gracie, who was completely absorbed in the spectacle, her vermilion lips
apart; at Sir Henry, whose eyes were humid. Then his gaze was dragged
back to the dancer. She was now beginning to circle round the floor;
faster and faster, in gyrations of the body, stoopings, risings,
whirlings: arms uplifted, disclosing the secrets of the arm-pits. In her
course, she came close to the tables, so close to Sir Henry's table that
Evelyn could have touched her. He saw her rapt face close; he heard her
breathing. The sexual, sinister quality of her body frightened and
enchanted him. She passed along. His desirous thought was: "She will be
round again in a moment." He understood then why she was a success, why
the rumour of her ran from mouth to mouth through the town. Faster and
faster. Someone applauded. Applause everywhere, louder and louder.
Waiters stood still. Faster and faster. Her face was seen alternately
with her bare back: swift alternations that sight could hardly follow.
Louder and louder applause. A kind of trial of endurance between Volivia
and the applause. At last she manoeuvred herself into the centre of the
floor, and suddenly dropped on to the hard floor in a violent
_entrechat_. And kept the pose, smiling, her bosom heaving in rapid
respirations, her tremendous legs stretched out at right-angles to her
torso. And, keeping the pose, ugly as in itself it was, she now appeared
graceful, elegant, beautiful and young. The applause roared about the
great room, every wave of it responding to every invisible wave of
conquering sensual sexuality which effused powerfully from her
accomplished body.
Sir Henry applauded loudly; Gracie applauded without any reserve. Evelyn
wanted to applaud, but he restrained himself; he did not want to be seen
applauding--not that anyone would have noticed him in the excited din.
Volivia rose, bowed and retired: Aphrodite, Ariadne, Astarte. The
applause persisted. Volivia returned, and, with her, two male dancers,
boyish, said by the learned to be her brothers, and by the more learned
to be her nephews, or even her sons. They came into the category of the
grotesque, dancing on their ankles, on the outer sides of their calves,
with their knees seldom unbent. They had a reception whose enthusiasm
was little less warm than that of Volivia's. Then Volivia, whose
departure from the floor had hardly been observed, returned again, for a
final trio or ensemble with the youths. This conclusion was the apogee
of the number. Nothing whatever of the anti-climax about it. Call it a
tumult, a typhoon, a tangled dervish confusion, so sensational in its
mingling of two sexes that diners neglected to dine and forgot to
breathe.
"The roof'll be off in a minute," shouted Sir Henry, furiously clapping,
in the deafening clamour. Again Evelyn did not applaud. After the three
had retired, Volivia reappeared alone, to accept that which was hers.
The curtains joined their folds and hid her. The diners breathed, but
did not yet eat. They were sorry that the number was over, but also
relieved that it was over.
The next and last number was a clown, who translated the classical
tradition of the English music-hall droll into French. He was an artist
in the comic, and the diners laughed, but with more amiability than
sincerity. And they ate.
Evelyn thought:
"What on earth has Jones-Wyatt been thinking about? This clown fellow
has been set an impossible task. It's not fair to him. He must come
before Volivia, not after. I'll have it altered for the midnight
performance."
"You know, really," said Sir Henry, while the clown was clowning. "Those
boys were better than the girl." Evelyn nodded carelessly, reflecting:
"Does he mean it? Or is he just pretending to be judicial, saving his
face for us and for himself too? After the exhibition he's been making
of himself!" If Sir Henry was trying to save his face there were others
in the restaurant making a similar attempt.
"Where did you pick her up?" Sir Henry continued, as if indifferently
curious.
"Prague, I believe. Praha's its new name, isn't it? I have a man always
running about the Continent after really good turns. They're not so easy
to find."
"Cost you a lot?"
Evelyn hesitated. He was on the point of saying "Oh! A goodish bit. I
don't remember the exact figure." Just to keep Sir Henry in his place!
Then he changed his mind. There was a more effective way of keeping Sir
Henry in his place. The way of the facts. "Yes. Volivia and Co. stand us
in for eighty pounds a week. The other turn forty or fifty. Bands and
cabaret come to not a penny less than twelve hundred a week." And he
added to himself: "Get that into your head, my friend."
"Bands so much?" Sir Henry gave an excellent imitation of
imperturbability.
"Yes."
"How many bands?"
"Three."
"One's American?"
"Yes. Here they are." Evelyn waved towards the bustle and the glitter of
new instruments on the bandstand.
"I knew they got biggish money in New York," said Sir Henry.
"They get biggish money in London," Evelyn retorted. "Why! I happened to
be going out by the Queen Anne entrance the other day, and the whole
alley was blocked with cars. I asked the porter about it--he's a waggish
sort of a chap. He told me they were the cars of 'the gentlemen of the
orchestra'!"
"By Jove!" Sir Henry exclaimed, glancing round. "There's Harry Matcham.
The very man I want to see. That big round table."
"Lord Watlington?"
"Yes. Gracie, I think I'd better step over to him now and fix a date.
Excuse me, Orcham--one second."
Mahomets go to mountains.
During this interlude of chat, Gracie had not uttered one word. Nor had
she eaten. She was playing, meditative, with the chain of her
vanity-case.
"Step over, daddy," she said.
"Lord Watlington hasn't had a dinner-party here for quite a long time,"
said Evelyn. "Cappone was beginning to think he'd deserted us." Gracie
did not speak. Evelyn went on: "I see Mrs. Penkethman with him, and Lady
Devizes and the two Cheddars. Rather Renaissance young men, those
Cheddars, don't you think?" Gracie still did not speak. Evelyn went on:
"I don't recognise any of the others."
"You know," said Gracie suddenly, looking up into Evelyn's eyes with a
soft smile. "That wouldn't do in a drawing-room."
"What wouldn't do?"
"That Volivia show."
"No. Scarcely," Evelyn agreed. "A drawing-room would be a bit too
intimate for it. But if it pleases people in a restaurant--well, there
you are; it pleases them. Volivia's the biggest cabaret success we've
ever had here. Now before the war that turn wouldn't have been
respectable. I do believe it would have emptied any restaurant--or
filled it with exactly the sort of person _we_ don't want. But we give
it now, and the Palace is just as respectable as ever it was. More,
even. Look at the people here!"
"It was shameless," said Gracie.
"Perhaps too shameless," Evelyn replied. "I admit I should have had my
doubts about it if I'd seen it on the first night. But the proof of the
pudding is in the eating. It's audiences that make a show
respectable--or not. I've heard our Cabaret-manager say it takes two to
settle that point--the show and the audience. But I don't think so. The
audience settles it. I'm sure some of these variety artists start out to
be--well, questionable." He was choosing his words so as to avoid
abrading Gracie's girlish susceptibilities. He meant 'indecent.' "But
sufficient applause, frank, unreserved applause, will make them feel
absolutely virtuous with the very same show."
He was defending his Imperial Palace against the delicious girl who had
used the adjective 'shameless.' She had changed now from the invader of
the cocktail bar.
"I'm sorry you think it was shameless," he said.
Gracie smiled at him still more exquisitely and more softly.
"I loved it for being shameless," she said, not with any protest in her
rich, dark voice, but persuasively. "Why shouldn't it be shameless? We
aren't shameless enough. What's the matter with the flesh anyway? Don't
we all know what we are? If I could give a performance like Volivia's,
wouldn't I just go on the stage! Nobody should stop me, I tell you
that." Some emphasis in the voice. Then she restrained the emphasis,
murmuring: "I'm rather like Volivia. Only she was born to perform, and I
wasn't."
Evelyn was very seriously taken aback, partly by the realisation that he
had completely misjudged her attitude, and partly by the extraordinary
candour with which she had revealed herself. If she had averted her
gaze, if her voice had been uncertain, he would have been less
disconcerted. But she had continued to face him boldly, and her tones,
though low, had given no sign of any inward tremor. And she had not made
a confession, she had made a statement. She was indeed as shameless as
Volivia. But how virginally, and how unanswerably!
Evelyn thought:
"I suppose this is the modern girl. I mustn't lose my presence of mind."
He said, trying to copy her serenity: "And yet you say Volivia wouldn't
do in a drawing-room! Why not?"
"Simply because in a drawing-room she'd make me feel uncomfortable. If I
feel uncomfortable I always know something's wrong. But here I didn't
feel a bit uncomfortable. _You_ did, and so did daddy. But not me.
Besides, you wouldn't agree that what can't be done in a drawing-room
oughtn't to be done at all. A big restaurant's much the same as a
bedroom. You see what I mean?"
"Not quite."
"Well, you will," said Gracie with gentle assurance. "Aren't you going
to ask me to dance?"
"In the middle of dinner?"
"Why not? What a question, from you!"
III
The Californian "Big Oak Band," with its self-complacent leader Eleazar
Schenk at a green and yellow grand piano, was just emitting its first
wild woodland notes; the first professional dancing couple was just
taking the floor beneath the patronising glances of the dandiacal,
tight-waisted bandsmen; and Sir Henry's wine-waiter was just pouring
forth champagne from a magnum bottle. The general gay noise of chatter
had increased. For not only at Sir Henry's table, but everywhere up and
down the room, great wines after elaborate years of preparation were
reaching their final, glorious, secret goal, quickening hearts as well
as tickling palates. And under the influence of these superfine golden
and ruby and amber liquids, valued at as much as five shillings a
glassful, quaffed sometimes in a moment, the immortal tendency to
confuse indulgence with happiness was splendidly maintained. The
graph-curves of alcohol consumption per head might be downwards, to the
grief of the hierarchs of the Imperial Palace; but on this Volivia night
the sad decline was certainly arrested for a space. Mr. Cappone and his
cohort of head-waiters and humbler aproned _commis_ knew all about that.
"I don't dance," said Evelyn shortly.
He rarely did dance, and never on his own floor. For him, there would
have been something improper in him, Director of the Imperial Palace,
deity of thirteen hundred employees, disporting himself on the Palace
floor. And further, he had not yet in the least recovered from the shock
of Gracie's shattering remarks upon the moral excellence of
shamelessness. 'We all know what we are,' etc. There she sat, to the
left of him, lovely, radiant, elegant, fabulously expensive, with her
soft smile, her gentle, thrilling tone, her clear, candid gaze, her
modest demeanour--likening restaurants to bedrooms, and--'we all know
what we are'! And he, Evelyn, monarch of the supreme luxury hotel of the
world, had ingenuously been thinking that in his vast and varied
experience he had nothing to learn about human nature!
"Oh! So you don't dance!" said she most sweetly.
She might, Evelyn reflected, be a bewildering mixture of contradictions,
but she was the most enchanting creature he had ever met. She had bowed
her glory in instant acquiescence.
"Why do you have American bands here?" she enquired in a new tone, as if
conversationally to set him at ease after his curt refusal to dance.
Yes, she was the ideal companion. He recalled the obstinacies of his
dead wife.
"Because they're the best," he replied, in relieved, brighter accents.
"We're miles behind them in this country. You see, the dance craze
started earlier over there than here. They're better disciplined, and
they have a better rhythm. They've taught us a lot. An English player
who takes his work seriously will give his head to play next to an
American for a month. Rather! Of course we get the best even of the
Americans, because we give the best treatment, to say nothing of the
best advertisement--not direct advertisement. Oh no! Never! That tall
fellow with the saxophone--he earns fifty pounds a week. We give them a
sitting-room and dressing-rooms, and a valet, and two porters to carry
their instruments about. We even press their clothes for them free of
charge. They behave like dukes, and we behave to them as if they _were_
dukes. But we wouldn't look at 'em if we could find any English band as
good, or nearly as good."
He had spoken with earnestness, for he was very sensitive on the subject
of engaging American bands in a London hotel. Italian and French and
Swiss managers, chefs, waiters--yes! They needed no defence. But
American bands had to be defended.
"Well, I never knew that," said Gracie, her voice full of understanding
and sympathy. "I thought it was a question of fashion, and pleasing
American customers."
"Not in the least!" said Evelyn with fire. "We make fashions here. We
don't follow fashions. And we don't kowtow to Americans or anybody else.
The Palace is the Palace." He laughed. "Excuse me," he added, lightly
apologetic.
"I like to hear you," said Gracie, and Evelyn felt that she did like to
hear his vehemence. She was a girl of quick comprehension.
Sir Henry returned to his table. Gracie immediately rose.
"Mr. Orcham and I are going to have just one dance, daddy," she said
calmly. "You get on with your trout. Then we shall be level again." And
she looked down at seated Evelyn with an expectant, beseeching,
marvellously smiling glance.
"But----"
Evelyn checked himself, mastering his amazement at her wanton duplicity.
As for shamelessness!... He might have resisted, but for the
half-timid supplication in her smile. No! He knew that he could not
anyhow have resisted. He was caught. Mixture of contradictions! She was
utterly incalculable! He rose in silence, forced a smile in response to
hers, and took the hand of the baffling enigma. And no sooner had he
taken her hand than he thought: "After all, why shouldn't I dance on my
own floor? It isn't as if her father wasn't here." They embarked upon
the sea of the floor, which was very rapidly filled with craft. From
time to time in their circumnavigation they passed close by Mr. Eleazar
Schenk, who, neglecting his fingers in a tune which they had been
playing twice nightly for six or seven months, looked at Evelyn with a
glance of condescending and naughty recognition. "I wish that fellow's
contract was over," thought Evelyn, ignoring the glance.
At first neither he nor Gracie spoke. Then Gracie said:
"Are you doing it on purpose?"
"What?"
"Holding me off?" She put the question with a cordial, delicately
appealing upturned smile. No criticism in it. A mere half-diffident
suggestion.
"Sorry," said Evelyn, and drew her body nearer to his, so that they were
touching, so that in the steps his foot was between her feet.
"You are a fibster," she said, with the same upturned smile. "You dance
beautifully."
"I don't know any steps except this one," Evelyn muttered. "It's too
monotonous for you."
"I'm loving it," said she, and for a moment shut her eyes, as if to
exclude all sensations save those of the music and of being in motion
with him, enclosed in his arm.
He could feel her legs against his, her body against his, her back
against his right hand, and the clasp of her fingers upon his left hand.
But there was nothing of Volivia in her contacts, only a delectable,
yielding innocence. Or so it appeared to him. He desired not to enjoy
the dance, but he was enjoying it. He would have been resentful of her
trickery, but he could not summon resentment. He thought: "Is it
possible that she has taken a fancy to me? If not, what can be the
explanation of her game?" Then he privately withdrew the word 'game.'
She was not a flirt, or, if a flirt, she had lifted flirtation to the
plane of genius. He was intensely flattered, for, though she had trapped
and annoyed him, he admired her tremendously. He admitted to himself
that she was the most surprising, wondrous creature he had ever
encountered. She was unique. A man cannot be more flattered than by the
confiding, devotional acquiescence of a beautiful and stylish younger
woman. Yes, her mien was devotional. And all the while he could feel the
firmness of her legs under the filmy frock. His emotion was well hidden,
but it surpassed anything in his experience.
A voice said behind him:
"Hello, darling!"
"Hello, Nancy darling," said Gracie.
The much-pictured Nancy Penkethman, dancing with one of the Cheddar
brothers. The two couples sailed almost side by side.
"When am I going to see you, darling?" asked Nancy. "I'm perishing to
hear all about New York."
Evelyn could feel upon him the inquisitive peerings of Nancy and one of
the Cheddar brothers.
"What's wrong with to-night, darling?" said Gracie. "Up in my rooms. I'm
staying here. So's father. Eleven-thirty, say. Bring the others along.
We'll have a time."
"The Lord Harry won't come. He's got a political date with the P.M."
"Never mind. Bring whoever'll come."
The two couples separated in diverging curves. (Evelyn's manoeuvre.)
The Big Oak band ceased. Dancers clapped, Gracie hesitated. Evelyn
loosed his partner. He had been chilled by the fact that Gracie was
capable of being wakened out of the ecstasy of the dance by the sight of
a friend, and of being at once sufficiently prosaic to arrange a
meeting.
"Thank you very much," he said conventionally.
"I loved it," Gracie repeated.
"Good band, eh?" Sir Henry greeted them loudly. He had disposed of his
trout, and grouse was being served.
"The best," said Evelyn.
"I say, daddy. Did you order a sweet?"
"No," Sir Henry replied. "I ordered nothing, and I never do order a
sweet."
"But I want one," said Gracie.
"Well, have one. The Imperial Palace is yours."
"What about a soufflé?"
"That will take twenty to twenty-five minutes," Evelyn put in.
"What does that matter, sweetie?" ('Sweetie!' However, Evelyn knew that
in Gracie's universe the word had no more significance than 'darling';
and he let it slip away.) "And while we're waiting couldn't we just go
and see the kitchens? I've never seen a hotel kitchen, and I'm crazy
about hotels now. 'Crazy'! Pardon!" Gracie laughed, placing her hand on
her mouth. "Reminiscence of New York, of course."
"'Crazy about hotels _now_!'" Evelyn repeated in his mind.
"That's not a bad notion," said Sir Henry, obviously attracted by the
notion.
Evelyn said that he would have the greatest pleasure in showing them the
kitchens. One of his fibs.
CHAPTER XV
CUISINE
I
The kitchens of the Imperial Palace restaurant were on the same floor as
the restaurant itself, and immediately adjoining it. You passed through
an open door, hidden like a guilty secret from all the dining-tables,
then up a very short corridor, and at one step you were in another and a
different world: a super-heated world of steel glistening and dull, and
bare wood, and food in mass raw and cooked, and bustle, and hurrying to
and fro, and running to and fro, and calling and even raucous shouting
in French and Italian: a world of frenzied industry, whose denizens had
leisure and inclination for neither the measured eloquence nor the
discreet deferential murmuring nor the correct and starched apparelling
of the priests and acolytes of the restaurant. A world of racket, which
racket, reverberating among metals and earthenware, rose to the low
ceilings and was bounced down again on to the low tables and up again
and down again. A world without end, a vista of kitchens one behind the
other, beyond the range of vision. The denizens were all clad in white,
or what had been white that morning, and wore high white caps, with
sometimes a soiled towel for kerchief loosely folded round the neck;
professional attire, of which none would have permitted himself to be
deprived.
The shock of the introduction into the Dantesque Latin microcosm, of the
transition from indolent luxury to feverish labour, was shown in
Gracie's features.
"You'll soon get used to it," said Evelyn, thinking with admiration how
sensitive was the puzzling creature. "See here!" He examined a board
studded with hooks, near the entrance, and pulled from one of them an
oblong of flimsy pink paper. "See?" He pointed to the scrawled word
'soufflé.' "'37.' That's your table."
"And what's that?" asked Gracie, putting her finger on certain
perforated figures.
"'10.12.' That's the time of the order. We stamp it. There's the machine
that does it."
"Good! Good!" ejaculated Sir Henry, tersely.
Evelyn restored the paper to its hook.
"Oh!" cried Gracie, suddenly childlike. "Do let's see the soufflé made."
"We will!" answered Evelyn eagerly, also childlike in sympathy. But he
thought: "Has she come here because she is really interested, or because
she wants to persuade me that she is interested?" His mind was peopled
with sinister suspicions which, previously squatting in dark corners,
had on a sudden sprung upright and into the open. "But what a marvellous
figure she makes here in her finery!" he thought.
"Oh!" Gracie cried again, perceiving a tank into which fresh water was
spurting. "What's this?"
A cook sprang forward and, seizing a long handle with a net at the end,
plunged it into the water and lifted out the net full of struggling
fish.
"_Des truites_," said he proudly.
"They little know the recent fate of three of their brothers!" said Sir
Henry with gaiety.
"How horrible! How can you, father? Put them back, please do." Gracie
had laid a protesting hand on Sir Henry's arm.
The trout were dropped into the water.
Two waiters at the delivery-counter snatched up two loaded trays which
had mysteriously been placed there, and hastened off into the other
world.
"You're pretty busy here!" said Sir Henry, surveying the noisy scene.
"This is nothing," Evelyn replied negligently. "You should see the place
at a quarter to two when everyone wants lunch at the same moment, and
watch the battle at that counter. There'd be sixty cooks here then. This
is comparatively a slack time."
Then approached down the vista a youngish, plump, jolly man, not to be
distinguished by his attire from anybody else. He had heard by the
inexplicable telegraph which functions in workshops that the Director
was in the kitchen, with guests; and he was hurrying.
"Ah!" said Evelyn. "Here's Planquet, the chef of chefs."
The man arrived, bowing.
"Let me introduce Maître Planquet," Evelyn began the ceremonial of
presentation.
The master-cook protected himself against the hazards of contact with
the extraneous world by a triple system of defence. Outermost came the
cushion of his amiable jollity. Next, a cushion of punctilious
decorum--obeisances, deferential smiles, handshakings, which expressed
his formal sense of a great honour received; for he needed no one to
tell him that only visitors of the highest importance would be
introduced by the Director himself. Third, and innermost, a steel
breastplate forged from the tremendous conviction that the kitchens of
the Imperial Palace restaurant were the finest kitchens in the universe,
and that he Planquet, a Frenchman, was the head of the finest kitchens
in the universe, and therefore the head of his ancient profession.
When he genially admitted, in response to a suggestion in French from
alert Gracie, that he was a Frenchman from the South of France, his tone
had in it a note of interrogation, implying: "Surely you did not imagine
that any but a Frenchman of the Midi could possibly be the head of my
profession?" His tone also indicated a full appreciation of the fact
that Gracie was an exceeding pretty woman. Behind the steel breastplate
dwelt unseen the inviolable vital spark of that fragment of the divine
which was the master's soul.
While Sir Henry vouchsafed to him in the way of preliminary small-talk
that he and his daughter and Mr. Orcham were in the middle of dinner in
the restaurant, his unregarding, twinkling gaze seemed negligently to
recognise that a restaurant, and perhaps many floors of a hotel, might
conceivably be existing somewhere beyond the frontier of the kitchens,
and that these phenomena were a corollary of the kitchens--but merely a
corollary.
"Ah!" said Gracie, over a dishful of many uncooked cutlets, meek and
uniform among various dishfuls of the raw material of art. "They have
not yet acquired their individualities."
The master gave her a sudden surprised glance of sympathetic
approbation; and Evelyn knew that the master was saying to himself, as
Evelyn was saying to himself: "She is no ordinary woman, this!" And for
an instant the Director felt jealous of the master, as though none but
the Director had the right to perceive that Gracie was no ordinary
woman. The master's demeanour changed, and henceforth he spoke to Gracie
as to one to whom God had granted understanding. He escorted her to the
enormous open fire of wood in front of which a row of once-feathered
vertebrates were slowly revolving on a horizontal rod.
"We return always to the old methods, mademoiselle," said he. "Here in
this kitchen we cook by electricity, by gas, by everything you wish, but
for the _volaille_ we return always to the old methods. Wood fire."
The intense heat halted Gracie. The master, however, august showman,
walked right into it, seized an iron spoon fit for supping with the
devil, and, having scooped up an immense spoonful of the fat which had
dripped drop by drop from the roasting birds, poured it tenderly over
them, and so again and again. Then he came back with his jolly smile to
Gracie, as cool as an explorer returning from the Arctic zone.
"Nothing else is worth the old methods," said he, and made a polite
indifferent remark to Sir Henry.
But the next minute he was displaying, further up the vista, a modern
machine for whipping cream. And later, ice-making by hand.
"The good method of a hundred years since." Then, further, far from the
frontier, in the very hinterland of the kitchens, was heard a roar of
orders. Two loud-speakers suspended from a ceiling over a table!
"Yes," the master admitted to Gracie's questioning, ironic look. "It is
bizarre, it is a little bizarre, this mixture. But what would you,
mademoiselle?"
Two shabby young men were working like beavers beneath the loud-speakers
and round about, occasionally bawling acknowledgments of receipt of
orders to colleagues in some distant county of the master's kingdom.
The party went in and out of rooms hot and rooms cold, rooms large and
rooms small, rooms crowded with industry and rooms where one man toiled
delicately alone. And the master explained his cuisine to Gracie, as one
artist explains an art to another artist who is ignorant but who has
instinctive comprehension. Down by a spiral staircase into the bakery
and the cakery. Up into an office with intent clerks and typewriters.
And everywhere white employees raised eyes for a second to the Director
and his wandering charges and the master, and dropped them again to
their tasks.
II
Evelyn, with Sir Henry, was behind the other two. He watched the
changing expressions on Gracie's face as she turned, and tried to read
them, and could not. Then Sir Henry left him and with an authoritative
query drew the master from Gracie's side. Evelyn joined her. They had
mysteriously got back to the kitchen of the wood fire and the revolving
game--but not the same game was revolving. Gracie approached the huge
hearth, beckoning, and he stood close to her.
"What is she going to say?" he thought. He half-expected, after the
exposure of the realities of cookery which she had been witnessing, that
she would say that never again could she enjoy a meal. She confronted
him with a swift movement; then paused, her lips apart. He saw Sir Henry
cross-examining the master across the busy, reverberating kitchen. And
on the edge of his held of vision he saw Gracie's beauty, and the
dazzling smartness of her frock.
"I must work!" she exclaimed, in a rich, passionate whisper. "I must
_work_! This place makes me ashamed. Ashamed. I wish I could put a
pinafore on, and work here, with all these men, instead of going back to
that awful restaurant full of greedy rotters. Why can't I work? I must
begin my life all over again." Then, more quietly: "Well, I did start
some work this morning, after Smithfield. Oh! I told you, didn't I? I
swear I will keep it up. Don't you believe me?" Her tone was now
wistfully appealing for confidence and encouragement.
"Yes, I believe you. Of course you will keep it up," said Evelyn,
staggered by the astonishing outburst. He recalled that in the morning
she had made a vague brief reference to writing. Was writing, then, to
be her work?
"There's no 'of course' about it," she said sadly.
A man strode through the kitchen carrying a pale dish on a tray.
"Oh! My soufflé!" cried Gracie. "It is. I know it is. I'd forgotten all
about it, and you never reminded me!"
She almost ran to the master.
"Good-bye, _maître_! Au revoir. You have been all that is most amiable
to us. Thank you. Thank you."
"But----"
"Thank you again."
Her tone was definite, imperative.
The master, puzzled, took the proffered highly manicured hand. She was
reducing him to his proper social level, after all this pretence about
_maîtrise_. But the master brought his defences into action.
"Too honoured!" he said, with geniality, with deference; and yet the
steel breastplate glinted through. The touch of his hand round hers
indicated the proud reserve which as the prince of his great world he
was entitled to show to no matter whom. And the master consoled his
pride further by a Gallic reflection upon the nature of beautiful girls.
Toys! Still, Gracie had very much impressed him.
Gracie scurried off towards the frontier, Evelyn following.
"My soufflé! It's gone!"
And indeed a waiter was now disappearing with it over the frontier. The
tail of Gracie's brilliant skirt disappeared after him. The whole
kitchen was momentarily agitated by the flying spectacle.
When Evelyn and Gracie reached table No. 37, having traversed the
staring restaurant in a scarcely dignified dash, the soufflé was already
magically deposited on the side-table from which No. 37 was served.
Sir Henry did not arrive till quite five minutes later. What remained of
the soufflé was then cold. But Sir Henry did not fancy soufflés.
"That fellow has a nerve!" thought Evelyn, "pumping the ingenuous
Planquet before my face, and behind my back too!"
CHAPTER XVI
ESCAPE
I
At ten minutes to eleven Evelyn said that urgent work compelled him to
leave them. He had not asked Gracie to dance again, and she had given
not the slightest sign that she wished him to do so. Time had passed
quickly. Evelyn had been relating the somewhat melodramatic professional
history of Maître Planquet. Also quite a number of minutes had gone to
the business, suddenly undertaken by Gracie, of writing a note and
sending it across to Nancy Penkethman and obtaining a reply.
"But you're coming upstairs to my little party later," she said to
Evelyn with a confident inviting smile. "You coming, daddy?" she added
negligently to Sir Henry.
"No," said Sir Henry, promptly, positively and curtly.
Gracie kept her smile waiting for Evelyn's answer. A smile which could
not reasonably have been described otherwise than as irresistible. Since
the visit to the kitchens her demeanour to the guest had been even more
exquisitely agreeable than before. Forgotten, apparently, was the short
passionate outburst concerning work!
"I'm afraid I mustn't," Evelyn said quietly. He had no intention
whatever of going to her party, to meet people whom he did not
personally know, and of the frivolous, notorious sort, which he had no
desire to know. Indeed he had been wondering how a unique girl such as
Gracie, and a public power such as Lord Watlington, could have arrived
at intimacy with smart, merely ornamental futilities such as Nancy
Penkethman, Lady Devizes and the two tall Cheddars. Further, his sense
of proportion, of the general plan of a day and of a life, made him
hostile to the very idea of these suddenly, capriciously arranged
festivities. Still further, he was tired, and he thought that Gracie
ought to be tired too.
But he had a far stronger motive for refusing. He emphatically did not
want to placard himself too strikingly with a famous girl like Gracie.
Already (he recalled again and again) the entire upper-staff of his
hotel was certainly aware that he had taken her to Smithfield at an
ungodly hour that morning, and that immediately on their return to the
Palace he had shown her over parts of the hotel. Also that she had been
enquiring for him in the afternoon and had asked for the number of his
car. And had he not dined with her that night? Was he not still, in
fullest publicity, sitting at her father's table? Had she not danced
with him? Had he not exhibited to her the kitchens of Maître Planquet?
Impossible that he should add fatuity to indiscretion, and increase
tittle-tattle, by going to her infantile party, which probably he would
not be permitted to leave till 2 or 3 a.m.! And why should he imperil
his next day's work by turning night into day? He was a serious man,
admired, loved and feared by other serious men. He hated any form of
notoriety for himself. And he would not yield to this bewildering,
lovely chit.
"Oh! But you can't say 'No,'" Gracie protested sweetly.
"Afraid I must," Evelyn insisted, and rose to depart. "So many thanks
for your hospitality," he said in a formal tone, addressed equally to
father and daughter.
"But I've told them you're coming!" said Gracie.
"Whom?"
"Nancy Penkethman. In my note. I've promised you to them."
Evelyn laughed a little, saying: "A young woman as beautiful as you are
is entitled to break any promise. I'm so sorry. Good night. I'm
fearfully sorry."
"I say, Orcham," Sir Henry stopped him.
"Yes?"
"You aren't forgetting my message to you this morning?"
Evelyn acted shame and alarm.
"Upon my soul I was!" he exclaimed. "Old age! Old age! Do forgive me.
You wanted to see me--wasn't it?"
"I'd like to have five minutes some time."
"You and your five minutes!" thought Evelyn. "Do you imagine I can't see
through you?" And aloud: "I'll be delighted if I can be of any use."
"I'm busy to-morrow morning," said Sir Henry.
"And my afternoon's full up," Evelyn instantly retorted; and added, in a
tone intentionally sardonic: "Our Annual Meeting."
"Oh, really! Well, there's no frantic hurry," said Sir Henry, very calm.
"Shall we say day after to-morrow, or the day after that. I shall be
here for a few days, might be here for a few weeks." Evelyn drew out his
pocket engagement-book and they fixed a rendezvous.
"It's coming at last," said Evelyn to himself as he walked away. "As if
the man didn't know I knew he knew all about the shareholders' meeting!"
He was only sardonic, not apprehensive.
As for Gracie, the girl's smile, at parting, had lost none of its
delicious, acquiescent sweetness. She might be erratic, wayward,
unpredictable; but she had manners.
Evelyn went straight to his private office, satisfied with his own
fortitude, but uncomfortable. He saw a thin line of light under the shut
door. Miss Cass, hatted and coated, bag in one hand, was tidying his
great desk. He was not expected in his office that night, and in the
morning he liked the desk to be absolutely clear, save for a bottle of
mineral water and a glass and some flowers.
"Anything urgent?" he demanded.
"No, sir. Nothing."
The next moment Miss Cass was gone, having shown her usual reluctance to
quit work. Three days a week she enjoyed evening-duty till 11 p.m.--for
the hidden life of the Palace, never dreamt of by visitors, extended
daily over a period of sixteen hours, and more--but Miss Cass would
willingly have served every night till eleven o'clock, or even twelve;
indeed, she hated to leave her subaltern in command of the Director's
sacred welfare.
II
Evelyn took a cigar out of a box of Partagas in the middle drawer of the
desk. Having lit it, he telephoned to the manager's room, and instructed
the assistant-manager, M. Cousin not being there, to see what could be
done about changing the order of the two turns in the midnight cabaret.
Then for some minutes he devoted himself to a cigar worthy of devotion.
Then there was a knock at the door, and, without waiting for permission,
entered--Gracie. Evelyn was really disturbed, by the thought not of a
danger to come, but of a danger past. If Miss Cass had been present at
this astounding incursion! If Miss Cass had met Gracie even near the
door in the corridor! A beautiful, stylish girl, unannounced, without an
appointment, a girl with whom he was already far too closely associated
in the minds of the upper-staff, invading the holy of holies after
eleven o'clock at night! And to find the secret retreat, she must have
made an enquiry. Therefore some member of the staff knew of her visit!
Therefore many others of the staff would soon know! Monstrous!
Incredible! He had lived dangerously in his time; but among men of
business, not in this fashion.
"May I come in?"
"But you are in!" Evelyn smiled humorously.
"Then you don't want to see me?"
"I'm delighted to see you."
Evelyn was standing. Gracie approached the desk, and sat down opposite
to him. Evelyn sat down.
"Now why won't you come to my tiny party?" she began at once. "You
aren't working. You're only smoking."
"Yes, I'm working," he said. "You know, there's quite a lot of work goes
on in this head of mine."
He was rapidly recovering from the shock of her unlawful erruption. She
made an enchanting picture in front of him. Before speaking again she
opened her bag, and critically beheld her face in the mirror thereof.
"Do you know--I must tell you," she said, "I'm sure you would prefer me
to be straight with you. I must tell you you're misjudging me."
"Misjudging you?"
"Yes. Or you wouldn't have said what you did about me being so beautiful
I was entitled to break _any_ promise. If I am rather good-looking, I
can't help it. And I loathe the idea that good looks 'entitle' a girl to
behave in a way that a plain girl wouldn't dare to behave in. I say I
loathe it, and I do. I'm not that sort. I do hope you understand." She
was imploring comprehension.
"Yes," Evelyn admitted sedately. "Quite. I oughtn't to have said it. But
I was only joking. I never once thought you were that sort." He would
have preferred that their intimacy should not grow. But there it was,
growing like the bean-stalk. And in spite of himself he was helping it
to grow. "But I've got something to say, too," he proceeded. "Why did
you make that promise to your friends without asking me? I was there
while you were writing the note. You might just as easily have asked
me."
"I might," she murmured, as it were absently. She was now busy at her
face, acting upon her own criticism of it. "I ought. But I didn't. I'm
frightfully sorry. It was cheek. But as I've got myself into a hole, you
won't leave me in it. You'll just lift me out of it like a perfect dear.
Don't be a spoiled darling. It wouldn't suit you."
Evelyn shook his head, smiling.
"I can't make out why you want me to come," he said.
"No, of course you can't. That's why you're such a dear. I want you to
come because you're wonderful." Her eyes left the mirror and gazed at
him.
"I'm not a bit wonderful," he said.
"I know you mean that. But you aren't a judge. I'm a judge, and I tell
you you're wonderful. And I'm dying to have you at my party."
"Well," he thought, "she's an enchantress all right. But not for me. And
she can't come it over me. Why the devil should I go to her party if I
don't want to? I'm not a friend of hers, and it's no use her pretending
I am. I won't go. And I won't and I won't."
But also he was thinking again, obscurely, that he must in some strange
way have made an impression on her. And that she was bringing something
new into his life. He was an extremely successful man. He had achieved
his ambition. He had a passion for his work. He was at the very top of
his world, secure. He had scaled Mount Everest, and there was no higher
peak on earth. What else had he to live for, he, still under fifty? But
she was bringing something new into his life. He had glimpses of vistas
hitherto unnoticed. Was it conceivable that she was in love with him? Or
was he a fatuous ass? If the former, what then? No, he was a mere
hotel-keeper. True, her father had risen, and he had been an early
riser, like Evelyn. But her father, though he had risen from a lower
level than Evelyn, was a financier, immensely wealthy--if only on paper.
And her father had begotten a daughter who in the last few years had
raised him higher even than he was before. Through the magic of his
daughter, he consorted on equal terms with the--well, with the smartest
individuals in London. Evelyn tried to disdain smartness, but he did not
completely succeed in disdaining it. Smartness had prestige for him. And
he was a mere hotel-keeper. What absurd nonsense! Yes, absurd nonsense,
but there it was! She was a marvellous girl. In two seconds he lived
again through the whole of his day with her. Marvellous! He was free to
marry. But as a wife, what a hades of a nuisance would the marvellous
girl be! Liability; not asset.
"And I've been thinking these ridiculous thoughts for hours!" he said to
himself, admitting that his mind was as disorderly as any girl's.
He said lightly to her:
"I hope you aren't really dying. I hope you won't die: because I
honestly can't come. I've got an appointment in ten minutes from now. I
should love to come, but----" He broke off. "You do believe me, don't
you?"
"I'm not sure," she replied quietly, sadly. "I'm terribly suspicious, I
can't help it, but I've a feeling you're treating me the same as you did
when we began to dance."
"Oh! How?"
"Holding me off. I'm more frank than you like, and it makes you afraid."
Here indeed was candour--candour either brazen or magnificently
courageous! He was shaken by the strong, sudden force of a temptation to
yield, to go to her party. Why not? He had no appointment; he had
nothing to do; and the sense of fatigue had left him. Her candour had
expressed the exact truth about him, whether she knew it was the truth
or not. He now desired to go to the party, to throw up his hands and say
comically: "Come along. Upstairs. The lift! The lift! I can't wait." It
was not that he was the least bit in love with her. If she attracted
him, he did not know why. She had beauty, but he was not a man to
over-estimate the value of feminine beauty; he had held beauty in his
arms. She had brains, or what in a woman passed for brains; but he was
alive enough to the defects of her brilliant mental apparatus, and he
esteemed that her brain was much inferior to his own. He had, in fact, a
certain sex-bias.
Nevertheless he desired to go to her impromptu party. That is to say, he
desired to stay in her company, hated to let her out of his sight,
feared that if he did he would regret having done so. She intrigued him
considerably; and he admired her manners, and keenly savoured her
admiration: that was all. But was it not sufficient? The party would
assuredly be amusing, and if it was not amusing he could leave it. As
for the gossip of the staff, to think twice about such a trifle was
childish. Every one of his reasons for refusing her was either false or
utterly silly. The trouble perhaps was that he was too proud to go, too
proud to withdraw his word and surrender. He had said he could not go,
and he would not go--not if he should have to regret his obstinacy for
evermore. Why the devil could she not take 'No' for an answer?...
Forcing herself into his private office as she had done!
"I must ask you to forgive me," he said, with a smile as sad as her
smile.
"You've been very patient with me," she sighed, and snapped her bag to,
and rose. "Good night."
"Good night." He followed her to the door and opened it.
"I'll see you to the lift," he said.
She turned on him, transformed.
"No, _please_! I couldn't bear that!"
Fury, resentment, anger were in her rich voice. She banged the door,
wrenching the handle out of his hand.
What an escape--for him, not for her! But an iron weight seemed to have
settled in his stomach. And he was blanketed in a heavy melancholy. He
said aloud in the empty, desolated office: "Have I ruined my life? Was
this the turning-point?"
CHAPTER XVII
2 A.M. TO 3 A.M.
I
Evelyn woke up in a state of some bewilderment. His feet felt cramped.
He looked at them and saw that he was still wearing his evening shoes;
also his dress-suit; also that many lights were burning; and finally,
that instead of being in bed, as he had assumed, he lay on the sofa in
the sitting-room of his private suite. Then, gradually passing into full
wakefulness, he remembered that he had sunk on the sofa, not to sleep,
but to reflect, to clear his thoughts, before getting to bed. He glanced
at the clock, which announced twenty minutes to two, and at first he was
sceptical as to its reliability; but his watch confirmed the clock.
Characteristic of the man of order that he at once wound up his watch!
He rose uncertainly to his cramped feet, and lit a cigarette. He had
slept without a dream for nearly two hours and a half; surprising
consequence of extreme fatigue! His body appeared to him to be as
refreshed and restored as though he had slept the usual six hours. He
must now really get to bed.
But his brain was furiously active, engaged in an unending round of
thought:
"That damned party is still going on. There were pros and cons, but I
ought to have accepted the invitation. I was a fool to refuse. It was
nothing after all. Only a little improvised party. Surely I was entitled
to refuse. Surely she might have taken No for an answer. Her outburst
was inexcusable, and it showed what she's capable of. The damned party
is still going on. There were pros and cons, but I ought----"
And so on without end. Revolutions of an enormous fly-wheel in his
brain, dangerously too big for his brain, leaving no space therein for
such matters large and small as the substitution of Miss Powler for Miss
Brury and vice versa, the changing about of the two cabaret turns, the
vague Machiavellian menace of Sir Henry Savott, the everlasting problem
of the downward curve in expenditure per head of customers in the
restaurant, etc.
He glanced around the sitting-room, where everything exactly fitted his
personality and everything was in its place; home of tranquillising
peace; but now disturbed by a mysterious influence. No peace in the room
now. He had held the room to be inviolable; but it had been
violated--and by no physical presence. And Evelyn was no longer, as
formerly, in accord with the infinite scheme of the universe, with the
supreme creative spirit. He had never consciously felt that he had been
in such accord. Only now that he was in disaccord did he realise that
till then he had been in accord. Disconcerting perceptions! Curse and
curse and curse the girl! She carried hell and heaven about with her,
portable! She was just not good enough. She continually flouted heaven's
first law.... No hope of sleep. To get to bed would be absurd and
futile. He would go downstairs. To do so might stop the fly-wheel.
He opened the door, extinguished all the lights, shut the door, opened
it to be sure that he had extinguished all the lights. The dark room
seemed to be full of minatory intimidations: a microcosm of invisible
forces hitherto unsuspected. He shut the door on them; but soon he would
have to open it again.
Descending a short flight of stairs, he walked along the main corridor
of the floor below his own, under the regularly recurring lamps in the
ceiling, past the numbered doors, each with a bunch of electric signal
bulbs over its lintel. Inhabited rooms, many of them--not all, for it
was the slack season--transient homes, nests, retreats of solitaries or
of couples. Shut away in darkness, or in darkness mitigated by a
bed-lamp. Some sleeping: some lying awake. Pathos behind the closed,
blind doors. Not only on that floor, but on all the floors. Floor below
floor. He always felt it on his nocturnal perambulations of the Imperial
Palace. And he could never decide whether the solitaries or the couples,
the sleepers or the sleepless, were the more pathetic. The
unconsciousness of undefended sleep was pathetic. The involuntary vigil
was pathetic. Salt of the earth, these wealthy residents in the largest
and most luxurious luxury hotel on earth, deferentially served by bowing
waiters, valets, maids! They pressed magic buttons, and their caprices
were instantly gratified. But to Evelyn they were as touching as the
piteous figures crouching and shivering in the lamp-lit night on the
benches of the Thames Embankment.
He rang for the lift. Up it promptly came, and a pale, sprightly, young
uniformed human being in it, who not long since had been a page-boy and
was now promoted to the distinguished status of liftman. Night was
common day to him; for, as hair grows night and day, so did the service
of the Palace function night and day, heedless of sun and moon.
"Evening, Ted."
"Good evening, sir."
"Let me see, how many years have you been with us?"
"Six, sir."
"Excellent! Excellent!... Ground-floor, please." Evelyn noticed the
No. 3 on the lift-well as the cage fell from floor to floor. The
third-floor was the floor of the party. Renewed disturbance in his
brain! "When do you come on day-work?"
"I hope in five weeks, sir."
"Ah!"
The mirrored lift stopped. The grille slid backwards. Evelyn stepped
out.
"Thank you, sir," said Ted, sat down, and resumed the perusal of
thrilling fiction.
The great hall was empty of guests; the scintillating foyer too. The
entrance to the ladies' cloak-room glowed with brilliant light. A
footman stood at the entrance to the darker gentlemen's cloak-room, and
within, at the counter, the head-attendant there was counting out money
from a box. And in the still glittering restaurant only one table was
effectively occupied--by two men and a woman. All the other tables were
oblong or round expanses of bare white cloth. Eight or nine waiters
shifted restlessly to and fro. A gigolo and his female colleague--the
last remaining on duty of a corps of six--sat at a tiny table apart.
The orchestra, which Evelyn could not see from his peeping-place, began
to play a waltz, which reverberated somehow mournfully in the vast,
nearly deserted interior. The professional dancers rose, attendant, then
advanced. The gigolo took the woman from the table of three, his
companion took one of the men. The second man stayed at the table and
passed the time in paying the bill. The waiter bowed, ceremoniously
grateful, as he received back the plate with a note and a pile of silver
on it. To Evelyn the waltz seemed interminable, and the two lone couples
on the floor the very images of pleasure struggling against fatigue and
the burden of the night. The female gigolo was young and elegant; she
must get some handsome tips, Evelyn thought. "Tips! My God!" he murmured
to himself, recalling that in one week in June the waiters' tips in the
restaurant had totalled more than eight hundred pounds. The waiters kept
their own accounts, but they were submitted to Cousin, who submitted
them now and then to Evelyn.
The orchestra, after threatening never to cease, most startlingly
ceased. But at once it burst vivaciously and majestically into "God Save
the King." The three males stood to attention; the women stood still.
Then the three guests sat down again at their table, and Evelyn could
hear the murmurs of their talk; he could hear also the movements of the
departing band. The professional dancers had vanished. The waiters
waited. At length the trio of guests left the sick scene of revelry, and
came up the steps into the foyer. Evelyn turned his back on them. In a
moment the table was emptied. In three more moments every cloth had been
snatched off the rows of tables, and every table changed from white to
dark green. The two male guests continued to talk in the gentlemen's
cloak-room. The woman had disappeared into the ladies' cloak-room
apparently for ever. But she came forth. The trio renewed conversation.
Never would they go. They went, slowly, reluctantly, up the stairs into
the great hall. The restaurant and the foyer were dark now, save for one
light in each. The head-attendant of the vestiaire was manipulating
switches. The entrance to the ladies' cloak-room was black.
"Ludovico!" Evelyn called to the last black-coated man haunting the
gloom of the restaurant. Ludovico span round, espied, and came
hastening.
"Sir?"
"Did Volivia perform first or second in the second cabaret?"
"First, sir. The other turn--clown, I forget his name, sir--refused to
appear first."
"Why?"
Ludovico raised his shoulders.
"All right, thanks. Good night."
And Ludovico ran down the steps again, and he too vanished. The
gentlemen's cloak-room was black and empty. The great hall was silent,
the foyer deserted except by Evelyn. The public night-life of the
Imperial Palace had finished. But not the private night-life.
Refusing the lift, with a wave of the hand to the liftman, Evelyn began
to climb the stairs; but he was arrested by the sight of the gigolo
(coat-collar turned up, and a grey muffler wrapped thickly round his
neck) and the girl-dancer (with a thin cloak hanging loosely over her
frail evening frock). The pair were walking about two yards apart, the
woman a little in front of the man: bored, fatigued, weary. For the
purpose of symbolising the graceful joy of life he had held her in his
arm a dozen times during the long spell of work; but now each displayed
candidly a complete indifference to the other; each had had a surfeit of
the other. They passed through the melancholy gloom of the foyer, up
into the great hall, and at the revolving doors thereof Long Sam
negligently saluted them--too negligently, thought captious Evelyn. He
followed, aimless, but feeling a sickly interest in them.
Approaching the doors, he acknowledged Long Sam's impressive salute with
rather more than the negligence which Long Sam had dispensed to the
working dancers--just to punish him! Through the glass Evelyn saw the
pair standing under the gigantic marquise, reputed to weigh several
tons. They exchanged infrequent monosyllables. The gigolo shivered; not
the girl. Then a taxi drove up, with a porter perched on the driver's
step. The gigolo opened the taxi and the girl got in. Bang! The taxi
curved away and was lost in the darkness. The gigolo departed on foot.
His feet traced a path as devious as a field-path. Fatigue? And he also
receded into invisibility. Where did he live? Why did he not drive home,
like the girl? What was his private life? And what the girl's? After
all, they were not dancing marionettes; they were human beings, with
ties of sentiment or duty. What was the old age of a gigolo? There was
something desolate in that slow, listless, meandering departure.
II
"Morbid is the word for me to-night," thought Evelyn, as he turned
towards the hall and nodded amiably to Reyer, the Night-manager, who
stood behind the Reception-counter as listless as the dancers. His mind
was not specially engaged with Gracie; he was afflicted by the
conception of all mankind, of the whole mournful earthly adventure. He
began a second time to climb the stairs. It was his practice to make at
intervals a nocturnal tour of inspection of the hotel; so that the
night-staff saw nothing very unusual in his presence and movements.
He walked eastwards the length of the first-floor main corridor all
lighted and silent, and observed nothing that was abnormal. Then up one
flight of the east staircase, and westwards the length of the
second-floor main corridor. At the end of it, he looked into the
waiters' service-room. It was lighted but empty. By day it would be
manned by two waiters. From midnight till 8 a.m. only two waiters with
one valet and one chambermaid were on duty for all the hotel, and they
ranged from floor to floor according to demand. Among them they
contrived to make good the quiet boast of the Palace that hot and cold
dishes and cold and hot drinks could be served in any apartment at any
hour of the night; for the grill-room kitchens, unlike the restaurant
kitchens, were open all night as well as all day. The sole difference
between night and day on the Floors was that in the night, instead of
ringing for a waiter, guests had to telephone their orders to the
central telephone office, which transmitted them.
Evelyn minutely inspected and tested the impeccably tidy service-room:
the telephone to the central switchboard, the telephone direct to the
bill-office, the gravity-tubes which carried order-checks to the kitchen
and bills and cash to the bill-office, the geyser, the double lift with
a hot shelf and a cold shelf, the books of bill-forms and order-checks,
the ice, the machine for shaving ice to put round oysters, the dry tea,
the milk, the mineral waters, the fruit, the bread, the biscuits, the
condiments, the crockery, the cocktail jugs, the iced-water jugs, the
silver and cutlery all stamped with the number of the floor, the
stock-lists hung on the wall, and the electrically controlled clock
which also hung on the yellow wall. Nothing wrong. (Once he had
memorably discovered fourth-floor silver in the fifth-floor
service-room: mystery which disconcerted all the floor-waiters, and
which was never solved!) Everything waiting as in a trance for a
life-giving summons. He went out of the room content with the
organisation every main detail of which he had invented or co-ordinated
years ago, and which he was continually watchful to improve.
Back again along the corridor, up another flight of stairs to the
third-floor corridor lighted and silent. Room No. 359. Rooms Nos. 360-1.
Rooms Nos. 362-3-4. Rooms Nos. 365-6-7-8. Not a sound through that door:
which was hardly surprising, in view of another quiet boast of the
Palace that no noise from a corridor could be heard in a room, and no
noise from a room in a corridor. Was she asleep, and in what kind of a
nightdress--or would it be pyjamas? Or was her party still drinking,
chattering, laughing, smoking, card-playing?
Then in the distance of the interminable corridor he descried two white
tables drawn apart from the herd of tables that stood at the door of
every service-room. And then both night-waiters emerged from the
service-room with dishes, bottles and glasses which they began to
dispose on the two tables. Evelyn turned swiftly back, and concealed
himself in the bay of a linen-closet. After a few moments he heard the
trundling of indiarubber-tyred castors on the carpet of the corridor,
the fitting of a pass-key into a door, the opening of a door, more
trundling. Then he looked forth. Corridor empty. Door of Nos. 365-6-7-8
half open. Both waiters were doubtless within the suite. He came out of
the bay, and walked steadily down the corridor. Blaze of light in the
lobby of the suite. Hats and coats on the hatstand. Animated murmur of
voices through the open door between the lobby and the drawing-room.
Impossible to distinguish her voice. He went on, and into the
service-room, which was in all the disorder of use. The pink order-check
book lay on the little desk near the telephone. He examined the last two
carbons in it. Suite 365. Time, 1.51. Two bottles 43. (He knew that 43
was Bollinger 1917.) One Mattoni. One China tea. One kummel. One
consommé. Six haddock Côte d'Azur. Quite a little banquet before dawn:
stirrup cups, no doubt! What a crew of wastrels! What untriumphant,
repentant mornings they must have! But he felt excluded by his own act
from paradise. He gazed and gazed. A telephone tinkled. He took up the
receiver.
"421--four, two, one----"
A waiter returned into the cubicle, maintaining at sight of the Director
an admirable impassivity.
"Here, Armand. Telephone," said Evelyn, with equal impassivity. He
handed over the receiver and left. The other waiter was disappearing at
the other end of the corridor, on his way back to his permanent post on
the fourth-floor.
Evelyn marched as it were defiantly, but on feet apparently not his own,
past No. 365. Door shut. No sound of revelry by night.... He would
not continue his tour of inspection. He could not go to bed. He
descended, flight after flight of the lighted, silent staircase; glimpse
after glimpse of lighted and silent corridors, all so subtly alive with
mysterious, dubious implications. The great hall had not changed. Reyer
leaned patient on his counter, staring at a book. Long Sam and one of
his janissaries stood mute and still near the doors. The other janissary
was examining the marine prints on the walls. As soon as he saw Evelyn
he moved from the wall as though caught in flagrant sin.
"What's it like outside, Sam?" Evelyn called out loudly from the back of
the hall.
"Fine, sir. A bit sharp."
Evelyn would have gone for a tranquillising walk, but he hesitated to
travel back to the eighth-floor for hat and overcoat, and he would not
send for them. He spoke to Reyer:
"I suppose there are no overcoats not working around here anywhere?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"All right. Never mind. I only thought I'd go out for a minute or two."
"Have mine, sir. May be on the small side, _mais à la rigueur_----" He
smiled.
While Evelyn was hesitating, Reyer dashed through a door far behind the
counter, and returned with an overcoat and a hat. Long Sam helped Evelyn
into the difficult overcoat.
"Not too bad," said Reyer, flattered, proud, and above all exhilarated
by this extraordinary and astonishing break in the terrible monotony of
the night.
"Splendid!" said Evelyn, nodding thanks.
A showy, but cheap and flimsy overcoat. No warmth in it. Very different
from Evelyn's overcoats. (Unfamiliar things in the pockets.) Well, Reyer
was only a young Night-manager. Fair salary. But not a
sixteen-guinea-overcoat salary. A narrow, strictly economical existence,
Reyer's. The hat was too large, at least it was too broad, for Evelyn.
Now Evelyn had a broad head, and he believed in the theory that unusual
width between the ears indicates sagacity and good judgment. Strange
that he had not previously noticed the shape of modest Reyer's head! He
would keep an eye on Reyer. A janissary span the doors for his exit.
III
The thoroughfare which separated the Imperial Palace from St. James's
Park was ill-lit. Evelyn had tried to persuade Authority to improve the
lighting; in vain. But his efforts to establish a cab-rank opposite the
hotel had succeeded, after prodigious delays. Two taxis were now on the
rank; and there were two motor-cars in the courtyard. The chauffeurs
dozed; the taxi-drivers talked and smoked pipes. He crossed the road and
leaned his back against the railings of the Park, and looked up at the
flood-lit white tower over the centre of the Palace façade.
By that device of the gleaming tower at any rate he had out-flanked the
defensive reaction of Authority. The tower was a landmark even from
Piccadilly, across two parks; and simple provincials were constantly
asking, "What's that thing?" and knowing Londoners replying: "That?
That's the Imperial Palace Hotel." But nowhere on any façade of the
hotel did the words 'Imperial Palace' appear. Evelyn would never permit
them to appear. He believed deeply in advertising, but not in direct
advertising. Direct advertising was not suited to the unique prestige of
the Imperial Palace.
In the façade a few windows burned here and there, somehow mournfully.
He knew the exact number of guests staying in the hotel that night; but
their secrets, misfortunes, anxieties, hopes, despairs, tragedies, he
did not know. And he would have liked to know every one of them, to
drench himself in the invisible fluid of mortal things. He was
depressed. He wanted sympathy, and to be sympathetic, to merge into
humanity. But he was alone. He had no close friend, no lovely
mistress--save the Imperial Palace. The Palace was his life. And what
was the Palace, the majestic and brilliant offspring of his creative
imagination and of his organising brain? It had been everything. Now,
for the moment, it was naught.
"What a damned fool I am!" he reflected. "Why the devil am I so down? I
don't care twopence about the confounded girl. Am _I_, the
hotel-world-famous Evelyn Orcham, to go running around like a boy after
a girl? It's undignified. And I don't mind _who_ she is, or what she is!
Anyway I've taught her a lesson!"
He withdrew his body from the support of the Park railings, and walked
briskly westwards. Restlessness of the trees in the chill wind! Large
rectilinear dim shapes of the enormous Barracks (whose piercing early
bugles made the sole flaw in the marvellous tranquillity of the hotel).
Then the looming front of Buckingham Palace, the other Palace! And even
there, high up, a solitary window burned. Why? What secret did that
illuminated square conceal? He felt a sudden constriction of the throat,
and after a long pause turned back. Three motor-cars in quick succession
hummed and drummed eastwards. Eternal restlessness of trees beyond the
railings! He thought he could detect the watery odour of the lake in the
Park. The sea-gulls had revisited it in scores that day. He had seen
them circling in flocks over the lake. Very romantic. What a situation
for a hotel in the midst of a vast city! He walked as far as Whitehall,
too melancholy and dissatisfied even to think connectedly. And at last
he re-entered the Palace. One of the taxis had gone, and both the
motor-cars. Everything as usual in the great hall. Reyer behind his
counter.
"Much obliged," he said, smiling with factitious cheerfulness, as he
gave up the overcoat and the large soft hat.
"Not at all, sir," answered Reyer, pleased.
"That the night-book?"
Reyer handed the book to him. He read, among other entries: "Three
ladies and two gentlemen left No. 365 at 3.5. One of them was Lady
Devizes."
Evelyn thought: "She's by herself now. Perhaps her maid is undressing
her. She must be terribly exhausted, poor little thing." She was
pathetic to him.
"My floor, please," he said to the liftman, and went to bed.
Next morning among the early departures he saw the name of Miss Savott.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE VACANT SITUATION
I
Just before noon, on the morning of Gracie's most unexpected departure,
Evelyn was entering the Palace after a business interview in Whitehall.
He felt tired, but he had slept, and none but a close student of eyes
and of the facial muscles which surround them would have guessed that he
was tired. Evelyn could successfully ignore fatigue. Indeed he now took
pride in the fact that after two very short nights and one very long and
emotionally exhausting day, and with a critical day still in front of
him, he had deliberately intensified the critical quality of the latter
by adding to his anxieties the inception of a new and delicate task:
which task concerned the future of Miss Violet Powler.
As for Gracie, he had learnt that she had left for the Continent by the
9 a.m. train--not the more fashionable 11 a.m. train--with the whole of
her luggage and a maid whose arm was in a sling. Sir Henry had not seen
her off, and was remaining in the hotel. Evelyn surmised that the
impulsive girl had chosen the earlier train because in the circumstances
it was just as easy for her as the other, if not easier. Doubtless she
had said to herself: "I'm up late. I'll stay up, and catch the first
train. That will give me two hours less in his ghastly hotel, and two
hours more in Paris." For Paris was certainly her destination. Where
else should she go? He surmised further that, if her maid was disabled,
Gracie had done her own packing, and the maid's too. He was sure that
she was 'that sort.' Also she was the sort that could take pride in
ignoring fatigue. A point of resemblance between them! He liked to think
of the resemblance. Of course her departure was the result of pique.
Well, let it be! He found a sardonic pleasure in her pique. Do her good!
His emotions about her were evaporating with extreme rapidity in the
fresh air and the commonsense of morning. He needed nobody to tell him,
for he could tell himself, that no young woman, however enchanting,
could make a lasting impression upon the susceptibilities of a wise man
old enough to be her father in an acquaintanceship of sixteen or
seventeen hours. She had been calmly but firmly ejected from his mind.
Nothing of the astounding episode stayed in his mind except inevitable
masculine self-satisfaction at a sentimental conquest, and shame for the
absurd feelings which had disturbed his soul after her resentful
outburst until he finally settled for the night. One might call him a
fish, not a warm-blooded man; but such now was his mental condition,
pleasing or the reverse.
Passing through the ever-spinning doors into the great hall he gave a
benevolent nod to Mowlem, the day hall-porter, who rendered back the
salute with equal benevolence and more grandeur.
Mowlem was one of about a dozen members of the staff each of whom
considered himself the most important member of the staff--after Evelyn.
He was quite as tall as Sam, and broader, but he pretended to no
physical prowess. On the very rare occasions when law and order seemed
to be in danger in the great hall he had methods subtler than Long Sam's
of meeting the situation. American citizens nearly always became his
friends. Once, an ex-President of the United States, suffering from the
English climate and insomnia, had caused Mowlem to be roused from bed,
and the two coevals had spent a large part of a night in intimate
converse. Mowlem was understood to be writing, with expert assistance, a
book of reminiscences of the Imperial Palace entrance-hall, for a
comfortable sum of money.
While crossing the hall, Evelyn heard his own name spoken in a discreet
feminine voice behind him.
"Can you give me one minute?" asked Mrs. O'Riordan, who also had been
out on an errand.
The head-housekeeper in her street attire looked as smart and as spry as
any visitor, and she was modestly but confidently conscious of this
momentous fact.
"Two," said Evelyn, having glanced at the clock.
He moved towards a corner at the end of the Reception-counter, and the
Irish 'mother' of the Palace followed him.
"I _think_ I've found someone to take Miss Brury's place," said Mrs.
O'Riordan, confidentially murmuring. "She's young, but she's had
experience, and--she's a gentlewoman."
"That's good," said Evelyn, cautiously, recalling the head-housekeeper's
theory about the advantage of engaging gentlewomen as
floor-housekeepers.
He divined at once that Mrs. O'Riordan was specially anxious to be
persuasive. Her grey hair never prevented her from exercising a varied
charm, of which charm she was very well aware. As she stood before him,
he could plainly see in her, not the widow aged sixty-two, but a
vivacious maiden of twenty-five or so. The maiden peeped out of Mrs.
O'Riordan's bright eyes, was heard in her lively though subdued voice,
and apparent in the slight quick gestures of her gloved hands. At her
best, and when she chose, Mrs. O'Riordan had no age. The accent which
she had put on the word 'think' was a diplomatic trick, to hide the fact
that she had decided positively on the successor to Miss Brury. And the
successor was no doubt a protégée of the head-housekeeper's, a favoured
aspirant. Assuredly Mrs. O'Riordan had not discovered the exactly right
girl by chance in the last twenty-four hours. He foresaw complications,
a new situation to be handled; the tentacles of his brain stretched out
to seize the situation.
II
Then he noticed a young woman in converse with Mowlem. A young woman
dignified, self-possessed, neat, carefully and pleasingly clad; but at a
glance obviously not a gentlewoman. Withal, Mowlem was treating her as a
gentlewoman; for the old man had the same demeanour towards everybody.
Never would Mowlem have been guilty of the half-disdainful demeanour
which on the previous night Long Sam had adopted to the professional
dancers. The young woman was Violet Powler, certainly telling Mowlem
that she had an appointment with the Director for noon, and enquiring
the way to his office.
Evelyn, because he was tired and had a full day's work before him, had
boyishly determined to straighten out the Brury affair without any
delay, and Miss Cass had received early instructions to get Miss Powler
on the telephone at the Laundry. He averted his face from the doors so
that Violet should not see him.
"Perhaps you would like to have just a look at her?" Mrs. O'Riordan
suggested.
"Yes, I should," he smiled. "But you can take her references and have
everything ready in the meantime. Only don't clinch it. I have someone
in mind myself for the job."
Mrs. O'Riordan did not blench, but that she was somewhat dashed was
clear to Evelyn. Inevitably she was dashed.
"Oh, of course," she said with sweet deference. "If that's it----"
"Not at all!" Evelyn smiled again, and more lightly. "You go on with
yours, and we'll see. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if yours is far
more suitable than mine."
"Is she a gentlewoman, may I ask?" Mrs. O'Riordan asked. Evelyn's eyes
quizzed her.
"That depends on what you call a gentlewoman. She's had what _I_ should
call a very good education."
"But her people?"
"Her father's a great traveller," Evelyn wanted to laugh outright and
boldly add: "A town-traveller." But prudence stayed him.
"Oh!" murmured Mrs. O'Riordan, indicating that she did not feel quite
sure about the social status of great travellers, and indeed that there
were great travellers and great travellers.
At this moment Evelyn was excusably startled by a most unexpected and
strange sight: Sir Henry Savott talking to Violet Powler, three or four
yards down the hall, away from the doors. Sir Henry was smiling; Violet
Powler was not; but the two had an air of some intimacy. What next?
Evelyn kept his nerve.
"Well, I shall be hearing from you," he said to Mrs. O'Riordan, and
departed quietly in the direction of his office.
Naturally he could appoint whomever he liked to a floor-housekeepership
in the Palace. And none would cavil. But peace, real peace, had to be
maintained, and immense experience had taught him the difficulty of
eliminating friction from the relations between women, even gentlewomen!
There was nothing he feared more in the organism of the Imperial Palace
than secret friction. Moreover he knew what he owed, of respect and fair
dealing, to the faithful and brilliant Mrs. O'Riordan. But he was
absolutely set on appointing Violet Powler. The idea of doing so was
his, and he had an intuition--he who derided intuitions in other
people--that it would prove satisfactory. He admitted to himself that he
had his work cut out.
CHAPTER XIX
POWDER AND ROUGE
I
"This interview is unofficial," said Evelyn.
Violet Powler was sitting opposite to him on the other side of the big
desk in the Director's private office. She had loosened her black cloak,
and Evelyn saw under it the same blue frock which she had been wearing
on the previous afternoon. Her hat was a plain felt. He could see
nothing of her below the waist. He remembered that her feet were not
small, nor her ankles slim; but he could not recall whether she had
high-heeled shoes. As a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace she would
have to wear black, and high heels, and he rather thought that the force
of public opinion among the housekeepers would corrupt her to make up
her face. Those pale pink lips would never do on the Floors of the
Palace. If she kept them untinted every floor-housekeeper would say on
the quiet to every other floor-housekeeper that poor Violet--what a
Christian name! Battersea or Peckham Rye all over!--had been imported
from the Laundry, and what could you expect?... No!
He had been inclined yesterday to regard her as beautiful; but now,
detached, rendered a little cynical by recent events, he decided that
she was not beautiful. Her features were regular. She was personable. It
was her facial expression--sensible, sober, calm, kindly,
contented--that pleased him. She would have no moods, no caprices. She
was certainly not one of your yearners after impossible dreams, your
chronic dissatisfied, all ups and downs. Even Mrs. O'Riordan had moods,
despite her mature age.
"The matter is in the hands of Mrs. O'Riordan, our head-housekeeper,"
Evelyn said further. "I've really nothing to do with it. But I thought
I'd better find out first whether you thought the job would suit you. We
want a new floor-housekeeper here. There are eight floors and eight
floor-housekeepers."
He then told Miss Powler what were the duties of a floor-housekeeper. He
told her with an occasional faint glint of humour. Her serious face did
not once relax; but he fancied that he could detect a faint answering
glint in her brown eyes. He was determined to see the glint in her eyes,
because he had discovered her as a candidate for floor-housekeepership;
as such she was his creation; therefore she simply had to be perfect,
and without humour she could not be perfect. (Not that many of the
floor-housekeepers had humour. Mrs. O'Riordan generally had, but
sometimes hadn't.) Still, he was obliged to admit that Miss Powler's
eyes were less promising to-day than yesterday. Yesterday, however, she
was at home in her own office. To-day she was in the formidable office
of the Director, and might be nervous. Yesterday he had acquitted her of
all nerves.
"It really all comes down to a question of human relations," he
finished. "I'm quite sure you could manage the chambermaids excellently.
They're the same class as our laundry-maids, and you know them. But the
visitors are a very different proposition, and quite as difficult. And
partly for the same reason. The supply of chambermaids is not equal to
the demand. Neither is the supply of guests." He almost laughed.
Miss Powler's lips relaxed at the corners into a cautious momentary
smile.
"You mean, sir," said she, gravely, straightening her already straight
back, "I've been used to being given in to, and with guests I should
have to give in."
A crude phrase, but it showed that she had got down to essentials.
"Not give in, only _seem_ to give in," he corrected her. "Say a
bedroom's cold because the visitor hasn't had the sense to turn on the
radiator. Well you turn it on, and fiddle about with it, and then admit
that there was something wrong with it, but you've put it right, and if
it isn't right you'll send a man up to see to it. Then just before you
leave you say: 'These radiators are rather peculiar'--they aren't--'may
I show you how they turn on?' You've won, but the guest thinks she's
won. It's always a she. No. That's not fair. It isn't always a she. Mrs.
O'Riordan says there's nobody more exasperating than a New York
stockbroker all strung up after five days' strenuous business life at
sea in a liner." Violet did smile. "It appears that American men are
super-sensitive to the bugle-calls in the mornings. Wellington Barracks
next door, you know. Those bugles can't be explained away. They'd wake
Pharaoh in his pyramid. I've thought of keeping a graph to show the
curve of explosions of temper due to those bugles. Probably about half a
dozen a week. Well, you always say that the bugles were unusually loud
that morning; you've never heard them so loud before; and that I'm
negotiating with the War Office to get them done away with. I'm not of
course. But it soothes the awakened, especially if you admit that the
bugles are absolutely inexcusable. As they are. Put them in the right,
and they'll eat out of your hand, visitors will. If you argue you're
lost. So's the hotel. Now I've given you a sort of general idea. What
about it?"
"I should like to try," said Violet with composure. "I often have to do
much the same with my laundry-maids."
Evelyn laughed.
"If I may say so," Violet added.
"I think you may," said Evelyn. And to himself: "She's all right. But
I'd better not be too funny." He said in a formal tone: "Then I'll
mention you to Mrs. O'Riordan."
"Thank you, sir. I'm very much obliged to you for thinking of me," said
Violet, with dignified gratitude.
"Of course there would have to be a period of training."
"Yes, sir. I understand that."
"But in your case it oughtn't to be long.... In your place I wouldn't
say a word at the Laundry. Mrs. O'Riordan might have somebody else she
prefers."
"No, sir. Of course." Violet spoke here without conviction. Her steady
face seemed to say: "You aren't going to tell me that this Mrs.
O'Riordan will refuse anyone that's been mentioned to her by you."
She rose to leave, for Evelyn's manner amiably indicated that the
interview was over. Evelyn did not move from his chair. Suddenly he
decided that he would just touch on a detail which had been intriguing
him throughout the interview, but which he had hesitated to bring into
the conversation.
"I happened to see you talking to Sir Henry Savott in the hall. Then you
know the great man?" He spoke with bright friendliness, socially, as one
human being to another, not as a prospective employer to a prospective
employee.
"Well, sir. I know him, if you call it knowing. He came up to me--in the
hall. My sister was his housekeeper, at a house he had at Claygate--he
sold it afterwards. My sister was ill in the house, and as I happened to
be free, I was engaged to do her work, for a month. Of course I could
see my sister every day, and she kept me right. I could always ask her."
Violet's demeanour was perfectly natural and tranquil, but reserved. She
added: "It's a small world; but I've heard it said you meet everyone in
the hall of this hotel, sooner or later." She smiled, looking Evelyn
straight in the face.
"But this is very interesting," said Evelyn, animated. He was intrigued
still more; for, like many other people, he had heard all sorts of
stories about Sir Henry's domestic life. "Then you do know something of
housekeeping?"
"A little, sir. I think I managed it all right. But of course as I say I
had my sister to tell me things."
"A large staff?"
"About forty, sir--indoor and outdoor. My sister had charge of
everything, indoor _and_ outdoor."
"Then _you_ had charge of everything?"
"Yes, sir. But my sister was there."
"Sir Henry entertained a lot?"
"Yes, sir. A very great deal, and often without warning us."
Evelyn opened Miss Powler's dossier, which contained, among other
things, her references and testimonials.
"You didn't say anything about this, I see, when you came to us."
"Oh no, sir."
"I suppose you didn't count it as a regular engagement."
"No, sir. And it was so short. But if I had asked him I think Sir Henry
would have given me a testimonial."
"Was Lady Savott there?"
"Oh no, sir." Just a slight betraying emphasis on the 'no.' "I've never
seen her ladyship."
"Then you left, and your sister took on the work again."
"Yes, sir, for a bit."
"She left. No?"
"My sister is dead, sir."
"Oh!" Evelyn's face showed sympathy. "She was older than you?"
"Yes, sir. Five years. Nearly six."
"Did she die in the house?"
"No, sir. After she'd left. Sir Henry asked me to go back. But I was
very comfortable at the Laundry then. So I didn't go. I don't believe
much in chopping and changing."
"Quite. You know Miss Gracie?"
"Yes, sir."
"She was living in the house?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"An extraordinary young lady, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir," Violet replied with imperturbable blandness; but their eyes
somehow exchanged a transient glance of implications--or Evelyn thought
so.
II
Perhaps, he thought, she should not have put any implications into her
glance. On the other hand perhaps he himself should not have used the
inviting word 'extraordinary' about Miss Gracie. The fact was, that when
he liked the person to whom he was talking, he had a tendency to speak
too freely. He had often observed this in himself. He admitted that
Violet had taken little or no advantage of his friendly social tone. No
expansiveness in her short, guarded answers to his inquisition!
Discretion itself!
He felt inclined to try to break down her discretion. Not in order to
get at secrets, though he divined that there were secrets, but simply
for the pleasure of breaking down her discretion. A slight, impish
wantonness in him. He checked it. The disclosure about Miss Powler's
professional sojourn at Sir Henry's house was very agreeable to him. It
would help him in his handling of Mrs. O'Riordan. In his mind he
instantly composed the tale which he would relate to Mrs. O'Riordan. She
could never withstand its allurement. Large house. House of a
millionaire. Staff of forty. Everything managed by Violet, who had taken
control at a moment's notice, and had given entire satisfaction. And had
said nothing about her success to anyone. He would say nothing about the
sister giving counsel in the background. Or he would only casually
allude to the sister. He could make an irresistible story, and the more
irresistible because of his now-strengthened conviction that Violet was
a real 'find,' and would soon prove herself a pearl among Palace
floor-housekeepers. Strange glance she had given him in accepting his
suggestion that Miss Gracie was an extraordinary young lady!
He rose, gaily. Yes, she had high heels. Excellent. No need to say
anything about the heels. And she had her own smartness. She was smart
in her world; she evidently gave attention to her clothes. And if she
could be smart in her world, why not in the world of the Palace? She
would be capable of anything. Later, he would be able gently to tease
the beloved Mrs. O'Riordan: "My discovery, Miss Powler! Not yours,
mother. Mine!"
Miss Powler went towards the door. Her hand was on the knob.
"You know," he said, on an impulse. "There'd be one thing, rather
important, if you don't mind my mentioning it----"
"Please."
"If you do come here--powder and rouge." He waved a hand. The lightness
of his tone was meant to soothe her.
She flushed ever so little. He had got under her guard at last. The
flush amused and pleased him. She had no caprices, no moods, no nerves.
Yet the flush!
She was equally different from the girl that Mrs. O'Riordan had once
been, and from Gracie Savott. These two had feminine charm. They were
designed by heaven to tantalise and puzzle a man, to keep him for ever
and ever alert in self-defence, alert against attack. Whereas Miss
Powler, sedate, cheerful, kindly, tactful, equable, serious,
reserved.... But what was feminine charm? It might have a wider
definition than he had hitherto imagined. He had read somewhere that
every woman without exception had charm. He liked Miss Powler's muscular
shoulders, and the way she held them; and her sturdy ankles. "And that
Gracie girl liked _my_ shoulders," he thought. Considered as an enigma,
Miss Powler, with her impregnable reserve, was at least on a level with
the Gracie girl. Nothing on earth so interesting as the reactions of sex
on sex. It was as if Gracie had pulled a veil from his eyes so that he
was perceiving the interestingness of all women, for the first time.
Revelation.
"Yes, of course, sir," said Miss Powler. "To tell the truth, I'd thought
of that. It would be part of the business."
"They'd put you up to all that here."
"Yes, sir. If necessary. But I know something about make-up."
"Oh?" Evelyn was surprised.
"Well, sir. You see. Our amateur dramatic society. I've had to make up
plenty of girls. They love it. And I've had to make up myself too." The
flush disappeared.
"Of course!" Evelyn exclaimed. "I was forgetting that."
And indeed he had totally forgotten it. She had caught him out there. He
felt humbled. She might well know a bit more about make-up than any of
the housekeepers.
She opened the door.
"It would hardly do at the Laundry," she said. "I shouldn't like it
there. Not but what a lot of the laundry-maids themselves do make up.
But here I might like it."
She smiled. For one second she was a girl at large, not a laundry
staff-manageress seeking to improve her position. Evelyn did not shake
hands with her. Why not, he asked himself. Well, there was an etiquette
in these ceremonials. A Director did not shake hands with a
floor-housekeeper. He stood still near the closed door, thinking.
CHAPTER XX
THE BOARD
I
The Imperial Palace had a number of private rooms in the neighbourhood
of the restaurant, used chiefly for lunches, dinners and suppers, and
each named after an English or British sovereign. At twenty minutes past
two on the day of Evelyn's interview with Miss Powler, six men sat
smoking in the Queen Elizabeth room round a table at which they had
lunched--after a Board meeting.
At one end of the table was the West End celebrity and wit, old Dennis
Dover; at the other Evelyn. At the sides were two youngish, exceedingly
well-groomed men, a much older man, and a middle-aged man. The last was
Mr. Levinsohn, unmistakably a Jew, solicitor to the Imperial Palace
Hotel Company Limited, and senior partner in the great 'company' firm of
Levinsohn and Levinsohn. The other three were Messrs. Lingmell (old),
and Dacker and Smiss (the youngish dandiacal pair). Except for Mr.
Levinsohn, the company consisted of Directors of the Imperial Palace
Hotel Company Limited. The celebrated Dennis Dover was chairman of the
Board, Evelyn being vice-chairman and managing director of the Company.
Youngish Dacker in addition to being on the Board worked daily in the
Company's offices as Evelyn's representative and buffer. Youngish Smiss
also worked daily in the Company's offices, his special charges being
the business side of the Wey Hotel and the Works Department in Craven
Street off Northumberland Avenue. ("Outpost in the enemy country!" Mr.
Dover had once called the Works Department.) Mr. Lingmell did little but
attend Board meetings. He was a director because he had always been a
director. Twenty-five years earlier he had retired from hard labour with
a sufficient fortune gained in the wholesale brandy trade, and he still
had the facial characteristics which one would conventionally expect to
find in a man who had dealt on a vast scale in brandy because he liked
it.
As for Dennis Dover, now past seventy, of huge frame, with a large
pallid face, his renown in the West End was due partly to his historic
connection with the management of grand opera, partly from his dry and
not unkind wit, and partly from his peculiar voice: which was not a
voice but only about one-tenth of a voice; it issued from a permanently
damaged throat through his fine lips in a hoarse thin murmur. Strangers
thought that he was suffering from a bad cold, and that his voice would
become normal in a day or two. It had not been normal for several
decades. Youngish Dacker, when he first joined the Palace Board and
appeared somewhat nervously at his first Board meeting, had happened to
have a very sore throat. "Morning, Dacker. Fine December fog to-day,
eh?" Dover had greeted him in the hoarse thin murmur. And dandiacal
Dacker had replied in a hoarse thin murmur unavoidably just like
Dover's: "Good morning, Mr. Dover. Yes, a fine December fog." Mr. Dover,
whose infirmity no one had ever dared to ridicule to his face, had
leaned forward to Dacker and murmured with a grim smile: "Young man, men
have been shot at dawn for less than that."
Glancing at his watch and at Evelyn, Mr. Dover benevolently and
encouragingly thus addressed Mr. Dacker and Mr. Smiss:
"Now, you lily-livered, have some brandy, for your hour is at hand."
At half-past two, in the larger banqueting-room, the Board had to
confront its judges, the shareholders, at the annual general meeting,
which meeting was to be followed on this occasion by a special general
meeting. The youngish men smiled as easily as they could; for indeed
they had betrayed apprehensions concerning the special meeting, at which
was to be proposed a resolution limiting the voting powers of
shareholders. Everybody at the table felt apprehensive about the fate of
that resolution, but Mr. Dacker and Mr. Smiss alone had failed to
conceal anxiety. The fate of the resolution might well involve the fate
of the Imperial Palace Hotel itself.
"Obey your venerable chairman, gentlemen," murmured Dennis Dover, and
raised his mighty bulk and filled the glasses of Messrs. Dacker and
Smiss with Waterloo brandy (which Mr. Lingmell said was so old as to be
indistinguishable from water). "Your alarm does you credit, seeing that
you won't have to speechify at the meeting and that you hold no shares
worth mentioning, and that if the Palace goes to pot the ancient
prestige of the Palace will set forty hotels fighting for your
services.... To the Resolution! To the Resolution!"
The toast was drunk, but by Evelyn and Mr. Levinsohn in Malvern water;
and the Chairman descended cautiously back into his chair.
Mr. Dover had a good right to the position he held in the Company. Not
merely was he the largest shareholder. His father, aged fifty odd when
Dennis was begotten in the hotel itself, had built the original Palace.
He had first called it the Royal Palace, because of its proximity to
Buckingham Palace; but in 1876, when Disraeli made Queen Victoria
Empress of India, Mr. Dover had loyally changed 'Royal' to 'Imperial.'
The name Palace had been copied all over the world. Dennis always
maintained that the French use of the word _palace_ as a generic term
for large luxury hotels had derived from the reputation of the original
Palace for luxury, and was not due to the prevalence of imitative Palace
Hotels throughout Europe.
In the late fifties the Palace luxury had made it the wonder of the
earth. It was then reputed to have a bathroom on every floor; and some
people stayed in it in order to see what a bathroom was really like.
Then a Crown Prince stayed in it, then a monarch, and Queen Victoria
would recommend it to some of her foreign distant cousins. Soon the
Palace had established two royal suites. Soon, despite the fact that
every hotel-expert in London had condemned it as being too impossibly
big, it became too small, and the elder Dover had enlarged it. More than
once it had been enlarged, altered, re-planned, reconstructed; but the
Queen Anne character of its charming façade had always been preserved.
The last and greatest and most ruthless of the enlargers was Evelyn.
When Evelyn had finished--but he had never finished--all that had
survived of the original Palace was the Queen Anne character of the
façade; not the façade, only the character.
II
As a child Dennis Dover had lived under the roof of the Palace in its
most majestic days. The elder Dover had amassed incalculable money under
that roof. But he had made a common mistake. He had forgotten that the
earth revolves. He had assumed that luxury could go no farther than his
luxury had gone. When he died, rich, though not as rich as in the
grandest days, the Imperial Palace, with all its unique prestige, was
beginning to be a back number. Trustees under the will of the founder
had done no better than trustees usually do. Then Dennis Dover had taken
command, and the public had been invited to buy the Imperial Palace. The
public, ingenuous as ever, and blinded by the glitter of prestige, had
bought. The Palace recovered a little, lost ground a little, recovered a
little, paid a dividend, passed its dividend, and was on the very edge
of being transmogrified into a block of superlative flats, when Dennis
Dover had chanced to sojourn at the Wey Hotel and to find Evelyn, then
in his thirties.
In ten years Evelyn, starting as an invalided A.S.C. officer towards the
end of the war, and spending three-quarters of a million borrowed in
instalments with much difficulty on debentures, had, after the formation
of a new company, made the Palace for the second time in its career the
wonder of the wide world. Twice in its career the prestige of the Palace
had thus shot up like a rocket; but Evelyn had no intention that it
should ever fall like a rocket.
Such, perhaps too briefly stated, was the history of the Imperial Palace
Hotel, whose royal suites, owing to a dearth of royalty, were now
occupied by cinema-kings, presidents of republics, and similar
highnesses.
As the six passed in irregular formation through corridors and
downstairs towards the larger banqueting-room (called the Imperial--the
smaller banqueting-room was called the Royal) Dennis Dover stepped
between Dacker and Smiss, and putting a hand paternally on the nearest
shoulder of each of them, and looking down from his superior height at
their upturned young faces, squeakily murmured:
"You don't mind me referring to the colour of your livers, boys? Sign of
affection."
They smiled. They knew their own worth; and they hoped that the Chairman
knew it and knew also that their interest in the Palace was fanatical,
and that they were intensely proud of having been elevated to the Board
at a cost to themselves of only a hundred qualifying shares each. What
they did not know was that father Dennis Dover loved them the more for
their apprehensiveness concerning the Resolution.
The Chairman himself was apprehensive, but he was old enough to be a
fatalist; and the risks attending a resolution to be proposed at a
meeting of a limited liability company could arouse no emotion in one
who would soon be crossing the supreme frontier. Old Lingmell was
equally unmoved, but not for the same reasons as father Dennis. He never
spent time in thinking about the supreme frontier. His investments were
secure, and the earth and the fruits thereof were good enough for him.
Mr. Levinsohn felt no emotion either; for him the matter was strictly
professional, one among a hundred such matters. As for Evelyn, he felt a
certain anxiety; but he was built on a rock, the rock of his creative,
organising brain, which the foolishness of no shareholders could damage,
which was more valuable than any investments, and which had a
world-market waiting to compete for it.
CHAPTER XXI
SHAREHOLDERS
I
The six men sat in a row behind a long green-topped table at one side of
the square-shaped Royal banqueting-room; and ageing Mr. John Crump,
secretary of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company and a member of Evelyn's
directorial staff, sat at one end of the table, with minute-books,
balance-sheets, the register of shareholders, and--most important of
all--a pile of proxies, under his hand. The Chairman and Evelyn were in
the middle of the six, who had no documents beyond a sheet or two of
rough notes or blank paper. Evelyn discouraged the exhibition of
documents in business, and father Dennis, with whom his understanding
was always sympathetically perfect, regarded documents as a symptom of a
fussy mind.
In front were the shareholders, two or three hundred of them, including
a few women, ranged in rows on the brilliant parti-coloured and gilded
banqueting chairs, and each holding a copy of the white annual report
and accounts.
Those chairs, with the rich pendant chandeliers, were the sole reminder
of the original purpose of the spacious chamber. At night, and sometimes
at the lunch-hour, tables were joined together in lengths, in the shape
of an E, or a rake, or a Greek letter, or a horse-shoe; they were white,
then, covered with china, plate, cutlery and glass, flower-decked,
gleaming, brilliantly convivial; and the people sitting round them,
ceremonially clad, grew more and more jolly under the influence of the
expensive succulence provided by Maître Planquet; until by the time the
speeches had begun and the cohort of waiters, marshalled by Amadeo
Ruffo, the Banqueting-manager, had vanished away through the
service-doors, every banqueter had become the most lovable and righteous
person of his or her sex, in every breast all food and drink had been
transformed by a magical change into the milk of human kindness, and the
world had developed into the best of all possible worlds: with the final
result that the attendants in the cloak-room received tips far exceeding
the ordinary.
Now, the scene was dramatically different. The rows of shareholders,
some stylish some dowdy, some harsh some gentle, some sagacious some
silly, some experienced some ingenuous, some greedy some easily
satisfied, some avaricious some generous, were all absorbed in the great
affair of getting money--the money which paid for banquets. A
nondescript, unpicturesque, and unfestive lot, thought Evelyn, who knew
a number of them by sight and a few by name. Some faces were obviously
new, and Evelyn looked at these with suspicion.
Without rising, father Dennis said in his hardly audible hoarse murmur:
"The secretary will kindly read the notice convening the meeting."
And Mr. John Crump, nervous as always on august occasions, got up and
read the notice in a voice rendered loud and defiant by his nervousness.
Then three unpunctual shareholders crept in on guilty tip-toes, and sat
down, and chairs scraped on the parquet.
Then father Dennis cumbrously rose.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began in his murmurous squeak.
"We're off!" thought Evelyn, humorously agog.
Yes, they were off, and there would be no surcease until the Resolution
was carried or lost by the votes at the special meeting.
Father Dennis never wasted words on shareholders, partly on account of
his throat, and partly because he delighted to starve them of words--at
the end of a good year--and also to shock them by his casual brevity.
He said, while some shareholders put hands to ears:
"Figures speak louder than loud-speakers. I am sure that you have all
studied our figures with that impartial conscientiousness which
distinguishes all good shareholders. I need not therefore weary you with
information of which you are already in full possession. I will merely
remark, as much for my own satisfaction as for yours, that last year was
a record year in the Company's history, that our net trading profit
after deducting fixed dividend on preference shares, debenture interest
and sinking-fund charges, was equivalent to twenty and a half per cent.
on our ordinary capital, and that we propose to declare a final dividend
making fourteen per cent. per annum for the year, instead of last year's
eleven per cent., and incidentally I will point out that we are
allotting £75,000 to our reserve fund, instead of last year's £60,000. I
move the adoption of the accounts and the payment of the dividend as
recommended, and I call upon Mr. Evelyn Orcham, our managing director
and orator, who will be less summary than myself, to second the motion."
With that he subsided into his chair, and glanced sardonically around as
if to say: "You can put that in your pipes and smoke it; and go to
hell."
No applause greeted the statement of good tidings. The shareholders had
been in possession of the tidings for days. At a banquet they would have
loudly applauded a silly and insincere speech which was not worth
twopence to their pockets. But to-day their stomachs had not been
warmed. And they were shareholders--who take as a right all they can get
and whose highest praise is forbearance from criticism.
Evelyn rose. He was not an orator, and speechifying made him nervous.
But he always knew just what he wanted to say, and he would say it
plainly, if too slowly. Now and then he would employ an unusual
adjective which tickled him. The sheet of notes which he held in his
hand was merely something to hold. He was not positively inimical to
shareholders, for they were necessary to his life-work. But he disdained
them as a greedy, grasping and soulless crew whose heads were swollen by
an utterly false notion of their own moral importance. Nevertheless he
used a tone different from the Chairman's. The Chairman was a London
figure, and could carry off any tone; and there was a pacifying glint in
the Chairman's old eye. Evelyn loved the Chairman's brief
pronouncements, which father Dennis called his 'turn.' But part of
Evelyn's job as a hotel-manager was to flatter shareholders. Bad times
might come again, and then shareholders who had been flattered would be
easier to handle than shareholders who had been treated year after year
with cynical curtness. Therefore Evelyn flattered, but with a hidden
private cynicism which even exceeded the Chairman's.
II
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began. "Your hotels"--and his thought was
"_Your_ hotels? Good God! They aren't your hotels. You couldn't have
started them. You couldn't run them. You don't understand them. You've
no idea what wonderful, romantic things they are. You know nothing about
them, except a few arithmetical symbols which I choose to offer you and
which are beyond your comprehension. You didn't buy shares because you
are interested in hotels; only because you believed that you could
squeeze a bit of money out of them. Whereas 'your' hotels are my
creation. I live for them. I have a passion for them. Without me they
would be hotels, common hotels, not _the_ hotels. If I left them, as I
could, your precious dividends would diminish and might disappear.
'Your' hotels are mine, and if you denied this I could prove it to you
quick enough. Ignoramuses! Is any one of you aware, for instance, that
at this moment I am wondering how the devil I can entice _my_ customers
in _my_ restaurant and _my_ grill-room to consume more than a dozen and
a half champagne per hundred covers? Does any one of you guess that in
my opinion an average of one-sixth of a bottle of champagne per person
dining or lunching is a shockingly low average--especially considering
the qualities of _my_ champagne? Not one of you! Barbarians! Benighted
savages! Unworthy of respect! '_Your_' hotels!"
In the midst of these lightning reflections he went on aloud to the
audience:
"Your hotels, thanks entirely to the willing and generous cooperation
which the Board has received from you in supporting us in a policy of
large annual expenditure in order to keep your establishments abreast or
in front of the times"--("This sentence is getting out of hand," he
thought. "I'd better kill it.")--"your hotels, I say, have passed
through an extremely difficult year not without credit. I will first of
all refer to the difficulties."
And he did refer to the difficulties: the poorness of the previous
London season, the obstinately high price of commodities; the dearth of
good service; the austerity of customers; the rapacity of customers, who
once asked only for food and drink at meals, then demanded music, then
demanded dancing-floors, and now were demanding cabarets; the
unwillingness of Americans to come to Europe in the anticipated numbers;
the monstrous and crushing absurdity of the licensing laws; the specious
attractions of continental resorts; the curse of the motor-car, which
had pretty well strangled week-end business to death; and forty other
difficulties... until you might have been excused for wondering why
the Imperial Palace Hotel had not been forced into so-called 'voluntary'
liquidation. The brighter side of the enterprise he glossed over. The
arithmetical symbols he touched upon lightly, using the plea that they
were self-explanatory to shareholders so intelligent as the shareholders
of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company Limited.
"In conclusion," said he, "I should like to refer to one point. Your
hotels, and particularly the Imperial Palace, have been called dear--in
their charges. I resent the word, and I think that you will resent it.
They are expensive; but dear they are not. We try to give, and I claim
that we do give, better value for money than any other hotel in this
country. And the proof that the public shares this opinion lies in the
undoubted fact that the public is patronising your hotels more and more.
The public cannot be deceived for long. Many hotels have attempted to
deceive it, and they have failed to do so. We--I mean everybody present
when I say 'we'--have not attempted to deceive it. I am sure that you,
the shareholders, would never agree to a policy of pretending to the
public that your hotels are what they are not. We maintain that they are
the most luxurious and efficient in the world, and that their charges
are as low as is consistent with the desire for perfection which
animates us all. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the patience with
which you have listened to my halting remarks--our ironic Chairman ought
not to have dubbed me 'orator'--and I have great pleasure in seconding
the motion."
One or two shareholders clapped, but, finding themselves unsupported,
ceased abruptly.
III
"Good old platitudes!" thought Evelyn, as he sat down relieved at having
safely accomplished his speech, and he surreptitiously winked at smiling
father Dennis. The meeting was finished, save for questions and
formalities. "And these people in front will go home feeling that
they've done something important!" thought Evelyn.
The Chairman asked drily:
"Any questions, ladies and gentlemen?"
A mature lady rose and with a self-possession unusual and perhaps
indecorous in a shareholder of her sex asked why in the Profit and Loss
account all payments--wages, salaries, washing, licences, advertising,
bands, fees, liveries, insurance, stationery, electric light, repairs,
renewals, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.--were lumped together in one huge
item. To which the Chairman responded that such was the universal custom
in Profit and Loss accounts of limited companies.
The lady's question was a very justifiable one; it jabbed a hole in the
beautiful convention which regulates the pacific union between
shareholders and Board. Many shareholders would have liked further
illumination of the subject. Some knew the right answer. But as the lady
wore an eyeglass, a starched white collar and a sailor's-knot tie, she
got no help; the subject was not further illuminated, and feminine
curiosity, which had thus flouted the sacred immemorial customs of
company practice, went unsatisfied.
Then a gentleman apologetically enquired whether the Atlantic telephone
had had any 'repercussions' upon the business of the hotels. The
Chairman answered that so far as he knew the Atlantic telephone had had
no 'repercussions'--he mischievously gave the faintest emphasis to the
splendid word--but that the managing director might have something to
say. Evelyn said that the Atlantic telephone had had no repercussions,
but that the shareholders might be interested to learn that in the past
year visitors at the Imperial Palace had spent £6,123 in using the
Atlantic telephone; that was appreciably more than £100 a week.
There were no other questions from shareholders. What questions indeed
could shareholders ask, after a record year, a fourteen per cent.
dividend, and an allocation of £75,000 to reserve? The resolution was
carried unanimously. Two directors who had to retire were re-elected
unanimously. The auditors were reappointed unanimously. And what the
official report described next day as a 'hearty' vote of thanks to
chairman, directors and staff was carried unanimously. Evelyn's heart
lightened, prematurely--a mechanical repercussion. It grew heavy again
as the Chairman rose and said:
"The proceedings of the Ordinary General Meeting being now terminated,
the Secretary will kindly read the notice convening the Special General
Meeting."
"Now we really _are_ off!" thought Evelyn.
CHAPTER XXII
THE RESOLUTION
I
In calling upon Evelyn to move the Resolution which was the sole reason
for the Special General Meeting, father Dennis hoarsely and squeakily
murmured:
"The meeting will I hope pardon me if I refer to a purely personal
matter. I am suffering to-day from rather serious throat-trouble, and my
medical adviser, in whom I have as much confidence as a sane man can
have in a medical adviser, insisted that I should make only one
speech--and that as short as possible," he added with a roguish old
smile.
Titters of laughter, which were, however, sympathetic. Every year the
Chairman thus mentioned his throat, as though the malady had but quite
recently supervened.
Evelyn did not wholly regret the sad state of the Chairman's throat,
because in practice it raised himself from second-fiddle to first-fiddle
at the annual gatherings. Also the nervousness which had beset him in
his speech at the Ordinary Meeting was now completely dissipated in
exciting emotion. Let none imagine that the moving of a Resolution at a
Special General Meeting of the shareholders of a limited liability
company cannot be emotional. Liability may be limited by Act of
Parliament, but not emotion--neither drama.
The shareholders were fully acquainted with the terms of the startling
Resolution, but Evelyn began by reading it in tones which almost
justified the Chairman's description of him as an orator. The Resolution
provided that instead of having one vote per share, each shareholder
should have only one vote per five shares. And further that no
shareholder, no matter how large his holding of shares, should have a
total of more than ten votes. He pointed out that obviously the
Resolution gave an advantage to the small shareholder, since a holder of
fifty shares would wield the same voting power as a holder of fifty
thousand shares. And he pointed out that, as the Chairman of the Board
happened to be the largest shareholder in the Company, the Board could
not be accused of an attempt to favour its own individual interests at
the expense of any other shareholders.
Then he spoke very vaguely of the possibility of foreign interference in
the destinies of the Company. He made no accusation. Oh no! He spoke of
a mere possibility--but a possibility against which, if the shareholders
in their wisdom agreed, it might be advisable to protect the Company.
Were the shareholders prepared to allow the control of a British company
to pass out of British hands? If so, well and good. If not, the
Resolution was the surest safeguard, the only real safeguard, against
such a contingency--a contingency which, he ventured to think, was of a
most sinister nature. The shareholders, who were doubtless thoroughly
acquainted with all the phenomena of industry and finance, had of course
noticed in past months that foreign interests had been ousting British
interests in various very important British undertakings. He would not
assert that any scheme was definitely afoot for getting control of the
Imperial Palace Hotel Company. He would be content to say that in the
last couple of years, and especially in the last few months, blocks of
shares had changed hands, and transfers had been registered, in a manner
calculated to arouse the suspicions, but no more than the suspicions, of
a watchful Board. The Board had desired the attendance of their good
friend Mr. Levinsohn, who had acted with signal success for many years
as solicitor to the Company. He, the speaker, could not pretend to Mr.
Levinsohn's unique authority in company affairs, and Mr. Levinsohn would
give the shareholders his valuable views on the subject before them.
Confessing that his own feelings as to the proper course to be followed
for the welfare of the Company were both clear and deep, and then
formally moving the Resolution, Evelyn sat down.
Certainly he had shown some emotion, some sense of the drama of the
occasion. But his clear and deep feelings, though he might not have
admitted the fact even to himself, were due less to a regard for the
welfare of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company than to the risk of his
life-work and his career being imperilled by the substitution of any
other Board for the Board which while nominally his master was really
his tool.
Evelyn's heart knocked against his waistcoat, but its beat was strong
and regular. He was nervous again; his glance flitted nervously about
the banqueting chamber, in which the sobriety of the green-topped table
contrasted so strangely with the glory of the chandeliers, the
brightness of the decorated walls and the gaiety of the chairs.
Ruffo peeped cautiously in through the double service-doors, and the
doors slowly and silently shut him out of sight.
Father Dennis's face had an expression of bland, negligent cynicism.
Lingmell's bloated, wise features were calm and absorbed in his
everlasting dream of fleshly satisfactions. These two old men were still
incapable of excitement. The two younger directors were employed in
subduing their fever into an imitation of tranquillity. Evelyn
understood them, but he doubted whether they understood him. He was too
far above them in attainments and position to be fully understood by
them. They might work hard; they might display a heroical loyalty; but
never could they reach his height, for they had not his qualities. He
felt sorry for them; for either their ambitions were humble or their
ambitions would be disappointed. The future king of the world of hotels
was not on the Imperial Palace Board; perhaps he was hidden somewhere in
the upper-staff.
The shareholders, stiff on their festive chairs, were grim,
unresponsive, waiting, flinty-souled.
II
Then Mr. Levinsohn stood on his feet. He was impassive, absolutely at
ease. Noticeably, unmistakably a Jew, he recked as little of
anti-Semitism as of a few drops of rain. He was above race. He had been
elected to the Carlton Club. He knew half the secrets of the City. The
demand for his counsel exceeded the supply. The lowest fee charged by
his firm for permitting the appearance of its august name on a company
prospectus was seven hundred and fifty guineas. The universal City
opinion was that he had a subtler and profounder comprehension of the
mentality of shareholders than any other man in England. He surveyed the
body of Imperial Palace shareholders as an alienist might survey a ward
of lunatics in an asylum; his handsome, hard, semi-oriental face was as
mysterious as the placid surface of a bottomless ocean.
Mr. Levinsohn said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I shall not detain you long. Need I say that I
share the sentiments expressed by your Vice-chairman. At the same time I
think that--patriot as he is, and a man of imagination, something of the
artist in him, no one can be the great organiser Mr. Orcham is without
having a large amount of imagination--he has perhaps not quite
sufficiently stressed the strictly practical business side of this
proposal."
Mr. Levinsohn paused, rubbing his blue chin. The attention of the
shareholders had been seized instantly. They were wondering what would
come next. What! The Company's solicitor criticising the Vice-chairman!
But nothing mattered, not even that; for they, the shareholders, were
judges and jury; and naught but horse-sense could sway them; and from
their verdict there could be no appeal. Evelyn was slightly puzzled; but
he said to himself that Mr. Levinsohn was anyhow the first man who
publicly at a Company meeting had shown a real understanding of him.
Curious, how this middle-aged Jew, speaking in a gentle conversational
tone, as careless about the form of his sentences as one individual to
others in a lounge, could without any apparent effort or art, put a
spell upon those tough shareholders!
Having placated his chin, Mr. Levinsohn proceeded:
"We are all men and women of business here, and we are all patriots, and
anxious if possible and fair to ourselves to keep British commercial
enterprises in British hands. But patriotism is a burden, and in common
justice the burden ought to be equally shared among the citizens. Your
shares stand on the Stock Exchange round about thirty-five shillings--in
my opinion decidedly below their real value. Supposing a group of
foreign interests--say American, purely as an illustration--came along
and offered you fifty-five shillings a share, as might well happen.
Patriotism might urge you to refuse, but in refusing you would be
throwing away something like two and a half million pounds, you, a
comparatively small body of citizens. The loss in actual cash would not
be shared equally by the electorate, it would fall exclusively on _you_.
Would this be fair? It would not, and I should be rather surprised if
your Vice-chairman did not say the same. The suggestion would be
monstrous. No reasonable person could make such a demand on you. Let us
look facts in the face. You would accept the offer, and you would be
right." (Murmurs of assent from the gilt chairs.) "And another thing.
True, the magnificent Imperial Palace and Wey Hotels would be lost to
British control. But the wealth of Great Britain would have been
increased by two and a half million pounds; and _you_ would have at your
absolute disposal the total purchase money, between six and seven
million pounds, for reinvestment in British industry and commerce under
British control. It seems to me clear that if the--purely
hypothetical--offer were actually made, the truest patriotism and the
most far-seeing business sagacity would accept the offer. Your Company
might cease to exist, but it is necessary to take a broad view, and in
the broad view British industry and commerce as a whole would gain a
considerable advantage. Bad business is never good patriotism."
The first genuine applause of the meeting greeted this aphorism.
"I have nearly finished," Mr. Levinsohn continued. "But not quite. I
have spoken of an offer, purely hypothetical as I say. Can an offer so
handsome ever materialise? It never could materialise if the prospective
buyers of your undertaking first obtained control of the Imperial Palace
Company by quietly getting hold of a majority of the shares, which as
things stand would mean a majority vote at a General Meeting. If by this
means any prospective buyers first obtained control they would be
sellers as well as buyers, and they would sell to themselves at any
price they chose to name, and those of you who had kept your shares
would find yourselves between the upper and nether millstones. You would
get left. The Resolution before the meeting will, if you pass it,
prevent this quite possible ramp. For these reasons, if you ask my
advice--not otherwise--I should advise you to vote for the Resolution.
Let me say that I am entirely disinterested. I hold no shares in your
Company, or in any of the many companies which do me the honour to
employ my professional services."
Mr. Levinsohn, having finished in the same conversational tone as he had
used at the start, quietly sat down.
No applause. A number of shareholders were whispering to each other in
small groups.
"Talk about an artist!" thought Evelyn. "This fellow is a finished
artist. I can manage a hotel. But this fellow has shown me that I don't
know the first thing about handling shareholders. Makes a good effect
first by pretending to disagree with me. Then simply rolls them all up.
Damned clever of him not to tell the Board beforehand exactly what line
he was going to take!" He would have liked warmly to shake Mr.
Levinsohn's hand, which he felt sure was always quite cold.
Mr. Smiss timidly seconded the Resolution.
"Any observations?" asked father Dennis quietly. "The Board will be glad
to have the views of shareholders, and to answer any questions."
III
A pause. Then a little, scrubby man rose from the front row and, looking
round at his fellow shareholders behind him, said in a rasping voice:
"With great respect for the wisdom of the Board, and giving full weight
to the opinions which have been so ably expressed by the Vice-chairman
and my friend the Company's solicitor, I venture to differ from them as
to the advisability of passing this most drastic and even revolutionary
Resolution. I may say that I am not without experience in the management
of public companies, as my friend Mr. Levinsohn knows. My experience has
taught me that ownership ought never to be divorced from control----"
At this point father Dennis pushed a scribbled note along the table to
Mr. Levinsohn: "Who is your friend? How many shares does he hold? D.D."
Mr. Levinsohn wrote on the paper and pushed it along to Mr. Crump, the
secretary. In a moment father Dennis had the reply: "Dickingham, a
solicitor. Probably one of Savott's nominees and speaking for all of
them," in Levinsohn's handwriting; and at the bottom, in Mr. Crump's:
"1,500. Bought six months ago."
Dickingham was continuing: "This Resolution, if carried, would obviously
divorce ownership from control." He turned again to the people behind
him: "If you pass the Resolution, you will be entirely in the hands of
the Board. Large shareholders will have no power. And it is well known
that the average small shareholder always supports his Board. I make no
reflection upon the small shareholder. I am one myself, and I make no
doubt that there are many here. As a rule the small shareholder is right
to support his Board. But the result will be the same, whatever his
motives: an autocracy of the Board, an autocracy which will last as long
as the Board chooses it shall last. If a similar Resolution to this
could be translated into politics--which happily for our national
welfare it cannot--and put before the House of Commons as a measure of
electoral reform, it would be laughed out of the House by every
political party. In fact no political party would dare to introduce such
a measure, were such a measure conceivable. I admit that it is not. The
principle which has made the Empire what it is is the principle of
control going hand in hand with ownership. The Resolution would abolish
control by ownership."
The speaker amplified his arguments at length, and ended:
"There is a proverb: 'Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.'
I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, to think of all that that wisdom means.
I feel that at this moment the fortunes of the Imperial Palace Hotel
Company are trembling in the balance."
Mr. Dickingham was applauded in several parts of the room. Then three
other men rose in succession, and, with much less suavity of phrasing
than Mr. Dickingham, spoke against the Resolution. Then silence.
Father Dennis lifted himself, and hoarsely squeaked:
"I have the pleasure to put the Resolution. Those in favour----" Many
hands were raised. "The Resolution appears to be carried. But of course,
if any of you would prefer a poll to be taken----"
"Poll! Poll! Poll!" cried a number of voices, fiercely, savagely. "Poll!
Poll!"
Mr. Crump began to finger the pile of proxies by which some dozens or
scores of absent shareholders had delegated their voting powers to the
Board.
Mr. Dickingham was on his feet:
"Mr. Chairman, if you will permit me to suggest it, I should like to
examine the proxies--of course in collaboration with my friend the
Company's solicitor."
"I have not the smallest objection," squeaked father Dennis
magnanimously.
The battle was now joined.
Evelyn drew symmetrical patterns on a piece of paper, continually
enlarging them and making them more elaborate and shading them. His
absurd heart was still more insistently beating. Mr. Dickingham had said
truth: the fortunes of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company were indeed
trembling in the balance. Perhaps also Evelyn's own fortunes. The
autocrats of a big merger of hotels might or might not invite him to
manage the whole lot. But the Palace was the Palace, unique. Anyhow he
would not accept a subordinate position, as manager of one hotel, not
even were that hotel the Imperial Palace itself. Either he would be
autocrat or he would be nothing--he would start life again. He could not
bear to look at the group of the two lawyers and the secretary,
examining the proxies, comparing them with the share-register. He could
not judge the total strength of the opposition. Nor could anybody else
on the Board or off it.
Presently he heard father Dennis say: "Shareholders will now kindly
substantiate their claims to vote."
Shareholders approached the table, some diffidently, some defiantly. The
assembly was in disorder. Noise of voices, explanatory and
argumentative. Mr. Crump had rather more than he could do, but the two
lawyers in their professional calm and patience helped him both
practically and morally. One by one the shareholders returned to their
seats. Then Mr. Dickingham sat down, his face illegible.
Mr. Crump rose and ceremoniously delivered a paper to the Chairman, who
showed it to Evelyn and lifted himself again:
"The Resolution is carried, by a majority of 22,111 votes," he squeaked,
and then added with characteristic gratuitous naughtiness: "Ownership
has exercised control."
"For the last time," shouted Mr. Dickingham in his rasping tone,
springing up.
"An improper observation," said the Chairman, smiling.
"I am sorry you should think so, sir," said Mr. Dickingham, pale and
furious. "And I will point out to those shareholders who do not know it
that you closed the Transfer books a month ago, and I understand will
keep them closed until after the confirmatory meeting a fortnight hence.
You have thus prevented new genuine holders of shares from voting at
this meeting or the next. If it had not been for this piece of sharp
practice, probably illegal, your Resolution would have been lost to-day,
and well you know it!"
Some uproar. Father Dennis replied with extraordinary mildness:
"The Board followed a perfectly normal procedure in closing the Transfer
books. They acted within their rights. And they certainly did their
duty. This gentleman"--he indicated Mr. Dickingham to the other
shareholders--"is a lawyer. He is therefore aware that this is not the
proper place to raise a legal question. There are the Law Courts. May I
remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of the statutory Special General
Meeting a fortnight hence for the purpose of formally confirming the
Resolution which you have been good enough to pass to-day. The
proceedings are now terminated."
IV
Before the room had begun to empty, Mr. Levinsohn came up to the
Chairman.
"Good afternoon, Dover," he said briefly and evenly. "I have another
meeting at four o'clock." He shook hands with father Dennis and with
Evelyn, and left, hurrying.
Everybody left. Shareholders could be heard in lively but hushed
conversation beyond the open doors at the end of the banqueting-room.
Evelyn had glimpses of them taking their hats and coats at the special
vestiaire outside. Lingmell departed, with one nod which served for both
father Dennis and Evelyn, the thought in his mind being that he had done
his duty by the Imperial Palace Hotel Company and was free for a time to
devote himself completely to himself. Dacker and Smiss went off at
speed, conscientiously to resume at once the round of their important
daily work. Mr. Crump gathered together his paraphernalia and, piling it
all on the large Register, carried the whole away like a laden tea-tray.
Ruffo entered through the service-doors, anxiety on his face. He was
responsible for the arrangement of the room for a banquet that evening,
and wanted the place to himself and his waiting minions at the earliest
possible moment. Nevertheless, seeing Evelyn and father Dennis still
together, he disappeared yet again. Evelyn, however, had noticed him and
his impatience. Father Dennis and Evelyn had sat side by side without
speech. Evelyn slowly tore up his patterned paper into smaller and
smaller pieces.
"Rather a lark!" hoarsely murmured Dennis Dover, with a grim,
benevolent, humorous smile at Evelyn.
"What?"
"Savott wandering about the hotel while all this has been going on. Eh?"
He spluttered laughter and touched Evelyn on the arm.
"He knows by this time," said Evelyn.
"You may bet your shirt he does!" said the old man, giving another
shaking laugh.
Evelyn smiled. He reflected that he had been wrong about old Dennis. Old
Dennis was not old. And he was not always cynical in his cheerfulness.
There was still a free, impulsive, warm youth in that body so aged, so
cumbrous, so unwieldy, and so dilapidated. His bleared eyes gazed into
Evelyn's eyes with quick sympathy. What could it matter to old father
Dennis whether or not the Imperial Palace changed ownership? Nothing.
Father Dennis had lived beyond such trifles. But it mattered
tremendously to Evelyn, and father Dennis's delight was for Evelyn. He
was fondly attached to Evelyn. And Evelyn, realising this exquisite fact
anew, felt tears spring to his eyes. He wanted to be by himself--he was
so happy, so overcome by the spirit of loving-kindness pouring into him
and permeating him from its magic source in the secret and divine place
hidden somewhere in father Dennis's coarse mortal envelope.
They rose and left the room together, and before they had reached the
vestiaire, Ruffo and his shirt-sleeved corps had rushingly invaded it,
carrying tables. Evelyn put the old gentleman into his vast overcoat,
walked down the steps with him to the Queen Anne entrance, and helped
him into his car.
"We must have that Board meeting to-morrow to elect our chairman," said
Evelyn as he was closing the door of the car.
"I reminded Lingmell," squeaked father Dennis. "Noon, isn't it? But he
won't come. Doesn't matter. There'll be a quorum without the old
ruffian." The car moved.
Evelyn strolled to his private office. Dacker, his _alter ego_ in the
affairs of the Palace, was standing at the big desk.
"I was just waiting for you, sir."
"Want anything?"
"No, sir. I thought you might."
An even increased devotion in his tone. His features were all joyous
exhilaration.
"No. Nothing," said Evelyn. "I'm going to have my tea upstairs. I'll be
down at five again."
"Yes, sir." Dacker's smooth face said: "You are entitled to your retreat
on this magnificent occasion. In your absence I shall watch over your
interests."
Evelyn went up in the lift to his home, and telephoned: "Get hold of
Oldham, will you, please, and ask him to bring me my tea here. The
Darjeeling, tell him. Thanks."
He dropped into the easiest chair that the works department of the
Palace could devise and make. A masterpiece of comfort. He picked up the
current number of _The Economist_, his favourite weekly, and began to
read it. A pretence! He did not read it. He was too happy to read, or
even to think. He yielded his mind utterly to the sensation of
happiness, saying to himself that he had never been so happy, never at
any previous moment of all his life. The vista of his life in the future
stretched beautifully before him. This kind of happiness had no
complications. Nobody had the right to violate his retreat, man or
woman. His monarchy was as absolute as that of a sultan--sultan without
a purdah....
Oldham softly entered with the tea-tray, which he set on a table by
Evelyn's side.
"I've brought you some hot ryvita in case you should fancy it, sir."
"Thanks, I shall."
"Thank you, sir."
Oldham glanced about the ordered room to see that its orderliness was
perfect. It was perfect. Then he glanced at his master. Happiness was on
Oldham's face too. Proud happiness, not for himself, but for Evelyn.
Oldham knew. They all knew. Probably Oldham did not understand just what
had occurred. But he knew that something supremely good for Evelyn had
occurred. And his devotion was exalted. Evelyn thought:
"What have I done to win all this loyalty? I don't deserve it."
CHAPTER XXIII
SUSAN
I
The reason why Evelyn altered his rendezvous with Sir Henry Savott,
Bart., from a mere encounter in the Directorial private office to a
super-intimate dinner in his own living-rooms upstairs was simple. He
had chanced, on the morning after the meetings of shareholders, to sit
side by side with Savott in the barber's shop of the Imperial Palace.
Here, white-robed, in the most modern operating-theatre in London,
ensconced in armchairs (from Chicago) which by a turn of a handle could
be transformed into sofas or beds or stretchers fixed at any desired
angle from the perpendicular to the horizontal, cropped, lathered,
shaved, laved, anointed, trimmed, rubbed, combed and brushed by forty
instruments and decoctions and oily perfumed compounds actuated or
administered by electricity or caressing human hands, the two men had
simultaneously submitted themselves to similar experiences.
They had begun together; they talked amiably from chair to chair; they
heard a fellow-patient enquiring from an operator how in an electric
scalp-massage the current passed from the throbbing machine into the
skull; they exchanged confidential smiles at such naïveté; they heard
the candour of unwitting customers concerning the characteristics of the
Imperial Palace and the peculiarities of other visitors; and they
exchanged more smiles; they overheard bits of extraordinary feminine
conversations through partitions which imperfectly separated the male
department from the female, and out of discretion forbore to glance at
one another; they discovered that neither of them had ever in his life
accepted the services of a manicure, and further that in nearly every
detail they had the same tonsorial tastes; they chatted freely about
neckties, collars, handkerchiefs and evening waistcoats. And, finishing
simultaneously, they had stood up together, recreated, shining, and
scented, and beheld themselves in mirrors and seen that they were
marvellously fine. The sole difference between them was that whereas Sir
Henry paid cash Evelyn only scribbled his initials on a check.
They left the luxurious marble apartment, cronies. There is nothing like
a barber's shop for producing rapid intimacy. Yet they had not bared
their souls. In the entrance-hall Sir Henry had praised the operators
and the installation. And in return Evelyn had said: "I say, supposing
we alter our date? Come and dine with me to-night in my secret castle
upstairs, if you're free. We shall be more at home there." And Sir Henry
had said: "I'm not free. But I'll get free. Eight-thirty? Would that
suit you?"
And Maître Planquet had received special orders; the guardian of the
wine-cellars too. And Miss Cass, learning the new arrangement, had of
her own accord intimated that it would be a pleasure to instruct the
florist about just a few choice flowers.
Thus the two met again in Evelyn's sitting-room at precisely
eight-thirty. No uneasy waiting about for women. They were too intimate
to feel the need for shaking hands.
"Very nice of you to have me escorted up here," said Sir Henry, who had
found a white-gloved page-boy waiting outside the door of his suite.
"Well," said Evelyn. "It's a little withdrawn, my castle. Have a glass
of sherry?"
"If I might have one of your 'soft' cocktails," Sir Henry suggested.
"Two," Evelyn murmured to Oldham, who was in attendance.
None but Oldham himself ever served at a meal in that room. A waiter
assisted, but he was forbidden by law from appearing in front of the
screen which hid the door.
"I see I'm behind the times," said Evelyn, observing that Sir Henry wore
a flower in his smoking-jacket, and he took a flower from a vase and
inserted its stalk into his button-hole. "That's better."
Sir Henry laughed deprecatingly. Evelyn poked the fire, whose function
was exclusively to cheer, not to supplement the radiators. As they stood
before the fire, sipping orange-juice, smoking cigarettes, and talking
of nothing in particular, Evelyn thought:
"After all, why shouldn't I have him up here? Shows him who I am, and
that I'm not suspicious of him, don't want to hold him off, as I held
off his strange daughter--so she said! Fact is I can handle him better
up here than down in my office. He's thinking already I'm going to fall
for him. I don't like his teeth, but he's a lot more agreeable to-day
than he was yesterday. He's damned civil. Is it all put on for my
benefit? No. Couldn't be. There's something about him that rather
appeals to me. His tone. His eye. A shade too small, his eye, but----He
may be quite all right. And I don't care a curse _what_ his reputation
is. Don't I always say you ought to take people as you find them? He may
be a thoroughly decent fellow. Well, then! After all, it isn't a sin to
want to buy the Imperial Palace. Anybody's entitled to try. And
anybody's entitled to lay hold of all the shares he can before he starts
to bargain. Childish to bear him a grudge. And if he imagines he can get
the better of me--well, we shall see."
Oldham took the emptied glasses, and Evelyn and his guest sat down to
the small round table.
"I really must congratulate you on your castle," said Sir Henry,
glancing round.
"Well," said Evelyn, "one does what one can to be comfortable. No
reason, is there, why I should make any visitor more comfortable than I
make myself?"
"You're right."
It was a man's menu. No caviare. No oysters. No hors d'oeuvre. Turtle
soup. Sole _Palace_. Pré-salé with two vegetables. No sweet. A savoury.
Oldham offered a 1921 hock. Sir Henry accepted, but Evelyn noticed that
he drank only a mouthful. The same thing happened to the champagne.
"They understand food and drink in your castle," said Sir Henry.
"As to that," said Evelyn, "I'll tell you my motto: Plain, and as
perfect as you can get it. I hope it hasn't been too plain."
"Couldn't be," said Sir Henry tersely. No trace in him of the gourmand
whom Evelyn had observed at the dinner in the restaurant.
The meal was finished in less than half an hour--before they had passed
beyond small-talk about such trifles as the Stock Exchange,
international politics, protection; on all of which, as it seemed to
Evelyn, Sir Henry spoke sound, impartial, unsentimental sense. In short,
they agreed. Sir Henry tasted port, refused cognac, and drank coffee.
Oldham handed Partaga cigars, and, the table having been cleared of all
but finger-bowls, ashtrays and cigars, bowed interrogatively, got a nod
from Evelyn, and disappeared, closing the door without a sound.
II
"Shall we sit by the fire?" Evelyn suggested, after a pause, and said to
himself: "It's getting time he began."
They sat in easy-chairs on opposite sides of the hearth, with a smoker's
table between them.
"This is very pleasant," thought Evelyn; but he felt like an infantryman
five minutes before zero-hour. He was of course firmly decided that Sir
Henry, and not himself, should be the first to mention business. Sir
Henry seemed to be absorbed in the delight of his cigar. He puffed it
vigorously, gazed at it as if in ecstasy, and puffed it again.
Tranquillity, the hush before wild weather, thought Evelyn.
"I saw from the departure list that Miss Gracie has left us," said
Evelyn, feeling the host's duty to keep conversation alive.
"Yes," said Sir Henry, suddenly vivacious. "Yesterday morning. Gone to
Paris with Lady Devizes and one of the Cheddars. Decided it all in a
minute, as they do." He gave a short, dry laugh. "Woke me up to tell me
she was off. Girls are a problem," he added confidentially. "Only thing
to do is to leave them alone. At least that's my conclusion. Most of
them are fools, if you ask me. But Gracie isn't. How did she strike you,
Orcham?"
"Well," said Evelyn, careful to appear detached and judicial. "I hardly
know her. But I should say she's about as far from being a fool as any
young woman I ever met. I certainly never met one more intelligent."
Sir Henry leaned forward: "Quite. But do we want a lot of intelligence
in a woman?"
"Yes."
"I suppose we do. Yes, you're right, we do.... We do." Sir Henry
looked at the fire.
"And as for beauty----" Evelyn stopped.
"You know," said Sir Henry eagerly. "I'm her father and all that. But
Gracie really _is_ extraordinary."
"I can believe it."
"She's given up motor-racing. Perhaps she was right. But it would have
been just the same if she hadn't been right. She's taken to literature
now. Writes. Naturally she wouldn't show me anything. Reads nothing but
Shakspere and the Bible. Very strong on the Psalms. You'd never guess
what she thinks is the finest thing in the Bible. She quotes it to me.
'Be still, and know that I am God.' Forty-sixth Psalm." Sir Henry
laughed nervously. "I'm dashed if I understand just what it means, but
you know, it sticks in your mind. Mystical, I reckon." He sniggered.
"I've been thinking about it ever since. What does it mean? It means
something to her. I expect you think I'm making a noise like a father."
The Biblical phrase fell into Evelyn's mind like a lighted torch into a
heap of resinous wood. Flames burst forth. The whole heap was on fire.
He knew, or rather fancied he knew, what the phrase meant. And whatever
it meant, it was the most remarkable sign of Gracie's extraordinariness
that had yet been disclosed to him.
"Perhaps," he said, meditative. "Perhaps we aren't _still_ enough. Never
occurred to me before, but perhaps we aren't." He was astonished at the
effect of the phrase on him. He too, after all, did not surely know what
the phrase meant, but he felt what it meant, and the spiritual emotion
which it aroused in him put the whole of his mind--his ideals, his aims,
his principles, his prejudices--into a strange and frightening disorder.
Saul, smitten on the way to Damascus! The talk had taken an odd, a
disconcerting turn. And through that extraordinary girl with her visits
to Smithfield before dawn and her 2 a.m. parties and her flight to
Paris--all equally impulsive, improvised and unforeseeable even by
herself!
"Well, well!" Sir Henry murmured, as if to indicate that that was that,
and no use worrying your head about it! And Evelyn saw that the subject
could not profitably be pursued further. Moreover he had a strong
instinctive desire not to discuss it. He preferred to let the phrase
burn undisturbed in his mind. But, he thought, how could even a Sir
Henry switch off from it abruptly to business? Business--after that
mighty and menacing command!
In a new, casual tone Sir Henry said: "I met a friend of mine here
yesterday morning."
"Oh?"
"When I say 'friend' I mean I know her. A girl named Violet Powler."
"Yes," said Evelyn. "I noticed you talking to her in the hall. She's
staff-manageress in my Laundry."
"So she told me."
"I'm thinking of taking her on here. What about her?"
"Oh! Nothing. Only she's a first-rater, Violet is."
"She said she'd been acting for a time as your housekeeper at--I forget
where. Claygate, did she say?"
"Yes. It was while her sister was ill. Those two sisters were wonderful.
It's a positive fact that inside twenty-four hours Violet had picked up
the entire job. I never saw anything like it. Never! I tried to get her
back again; but she wouldn't come. I gave up trying."
"Why wouldn't she? I should have thought it was a much better situation
than anything I could offer her."
"Perhaps it was. But of course I don't know how good your situations
are. I know I'd have given her practically any salary she cared to ask.
I wouldn't like to say whether Violet or Susan was the best of the two.
Susan was the eldest."
"Died, didn't she?"
"She did," said Sir Henry quietly. And still in a very quiet voice, and
with gaze averted, he went on: "When I tell you I very nearly married
Susan----" He ceased.
"Well!" thought Evelyn, with more than the notorious swiftness of
thought: "If Susan actually _was_ anything like Violet, that's the best
thing I ever heard about you!"
He was indeed astounded. He saw Violet Powler in a new light, as the
sister of an exceedingly opulent Lady Savott; but he could not imagine
Susan as stepmother to a Gracie. And yet, why not? If she was anything
like Violet, she would have been adequate for that or any other rôle. He
was flatteringly confirmed in his opinion of himself as a judge of
individualities.... More ammunition for him in his imminent contest
with Mrs. O'Riordan about the selection of Violet Powler as a Palace
floor-housekeeper!
"Really!" he breathed sympathetically. He truly felt sympathetic.
As Sir Henry was looking at the hearthrug Evelyn could scrutinise his
face at leisure, without rudeness. He saw the Savott reputation in those
features. The small eyes with their perforating and yet far-away gaze,
the hard jaw, the inhuman regular teeth! (Evelyn's teeth were somewhat
irregular, and he thanked God for it.) But there must be, there was,
another facet, unnoticed by the world of affairs, to Henry Savott's
individuality. He could see it now, in the attitude humble and soft. And
even if, under the influence of Savott's confession, he only imagined he
saw it, it must still be there: for not merely must Savott have
responded to the fineness of Violet's sister, but she in turn must have
found fineness in Savott.
"My private affairs," said Sir Henry, "used to fill a lot of space in
the newspapers. So I daresay you know more about them than I do myself."
He glanced up, with a terrible sardonic smile, then lowered his eyes
again. "It was before I got free of Lady Savott that I wanted to come to
an understanding with Susan. But she was so afraid she'd be mixed up in
the divorce proceedings, and I couldn't make her see she wouldn't be,
couldn't possibly be. You know if a woman doesn't see a thing for
herself you can't reason her into seeing it. No. She wouldn't give even
a provisional consent. Didn't like the idea of it. And when I was free
it was just too late. I did everything I could to save her life.
Everything.... She was on my side right enough against Lady Savott.
She knew the facts. She'd seen 'em. It was seeing Violet yesterday that
brought it all back to me. Funny, I don't know to this day whether
Violet knew how things were between her sister and me! I doubt whether
Susan ever said a word to a soul. Tremendously reserved; and as for
discretion!... Excuse me boring you. It came over me, all of a
sudden. Well, well!" Sir Henry gave renewed attention to the Partaga.
Evelyn was flattered once more by the confidence. He was saddened; but
his sadness was not unpleasant; it had a quality of beauty. Strange,
startling encounter, there in the handsome and comfortable room, after
the perfect meal, the perfect wines, and in the middle of the perfect
cigar! And flowers in their button-holes! Strange encounter with this
dictatorial and ruthless specimen of the top-dog; prince of
practitioners of company-mongering, whose schemes might and did imperil
the happiness of thousands of under-dogs, and also many middle-dogs! All
his wealth and all his power had not sufficed to save him from the fate
of being himself, in a different sense, an under-dog too. Well might the
man's heart echo with the Psalmist's intimidating 'Be still, and know
that I am God!' Genuine and affecting sympathy for the survivor of the
tragedy drew Evelyn towards Sir Henry. And yet, in the very moment of
his compassion, he was thinking: "I bet it hasn't prevented him from
amusing himself since."
"Now look here!" said Sir Henry in a voice suddenly strong and perhaps
more domineering than he meant it to be, "I've not come here to make a
nuisance of myself."
"Not at all," Evelyn mildly interjected.
"Yes, yes. A damned nuisance!" Sir Henry stood up and stood straight.
"I've come here to try to do a bit of business, anyhow to begin it. You
know what it is of course."
"What I do know," thought Evelyn, "is that whether you intended it or
not, you and I'll never be on a purely business footing again." He kept
silence and waited, merely waving his cigar as a sign of concurrence.
CHAPTER XXIV
DOGS
I
"Now," said Sir Henry, still standing, with his back to the fire and,
perhaps somewhat masterfully, looking down upon Evelyn, who lounged in
the easy-chair. "I want you to believe that I have nothing whatever to
conceal from you. If I tried to conceal anything from a man like you, I
know I shouldn't succeed--for long. You know too much about your
business, and you're far too clever. Don't think I'm flattering you. I'm
not. And what's more, you must know I'm not. You must know very well
that in your own line you're the first man in the world. Now don't you?
Honest to God!"
"There are one or two pretty fine men in Germany," said Evelyn.
"Do you think they are equal to you? Do you?"
Evelyn leaned forward, and with his elbows on his knees let his forearms
droop towards the floor.
"Do you wish to make me talk like a conceited ass?" he asked, cigar
between teeth.
"No. I wish you to answer a question. Yes, or no?"
All Evelyn's intense natural reserve rose up to prevent him from giving
a direct answer.
"How can I tell? How do I know whether the German fellows aren't equal
to me. I'm an interested party."
"Of course you're an interested party. But I'm not asking you what you
_know_. I'm asking you what you _think_. You have an opinion. What is
it?"
"Well, I don't think they are equal to me."
"Confession is good for the soul," said Sir Henry, smiling and making a
brilliant display of his teeth.
"I'm not so sure about that," Evelyn thought. "And why does he use these
worn-out phrases? 'Confession is good for the soul!' Good God!"
"Thanks!" said Sir Henry. "May I have another cigar?"
Evelyn negligently pointed to the box on the table. Sir Henry picked
one, bit the end off it--his sharp teeth made a matchless
cigar-cutter--and lit the new cigar from the old, violently puffing
forth clouds of blue smoke.
"He doesn't know a lot about cigar-smoking," Evelyn thought. "He's got
that cigar too hot right at the start. And he's finished one already,
and mine's only half through."
"Well," resumed Sir Henry, carefully dropping the end of the old cigar
into the fire and turning to Evelyn again, with a benevolent expression.
"So far so good. Well, as I say, I'm going to be perfectly open with
you. That isn't always my way in big negotiations. But it's my way this
time, because I feel it'll be the best way with you. No other reason. No
question of moral principle and so on. Candour isn't necessarily the
best policy. It often isn't, by Jove. But in this case it is. I reckon
myself a very good judge of character. You can appreciate frankness,
because you aren't sentimental."
"That's true," thought Evelyn, really flattered again. "He _is_ a bit of
a judge of character. And he's devilish different to-night from the man
who stood me a dinner the night before last." Evelyn was impressed, and
he admitted to himself that his first estimate of Sir Henry had been
inadequate. He said nothing; just waited.
"I'll tell you something possibly you don't know. Let me mention a few
hotels. For instance, the Majestic in London, your only serious rival,
and the Duncannon in London. The Concorde and the Montaigne in Paris.
The Minerva at Cannes. The Escurial in Madrid. The Bottecini at San
Remo. The Albergo Umberto in Rome."
"That's eight."
"Yes. What do you think of them?"
"Not a bad selection," said Evelyn coldly. "Fairly representative. Very
fairly."
His mind passed with extreme rapidity through the list. He was well
acquainted with every one of the eight, either from personal knowledge
or from reliable report; with its good and its bad characteristics, the
nature of its clientèle, its efficiencies and inefficiencies, its past,
its present and its prospects; also with the percentages of its
dividends earned, its dividends actually paid out, or in the alternative
its trading loss. And in his mind, assessing all the eight
simultaneously and instantaneously, he considered and decided--by no
means for the first time--how each of them could be improved. An
imposing lot truly; but less imposing to Evelyn than to a layman; as a
first-rate virtuoso's piano-playing is less _imposing_ to another
first-rate piano virtuoso than to a layman.
And what he would have called 'the conceited ass' in himself reflected
upon the immense fuss which would be made of him if he walked into any
one of them and presented his card: "Mr. Evelyn Orcham, Managing
Director, Imperial Palace Hotel, London." Of which immense fuss he had
on various occasions had experience. For he was a retiring man, though
he would never coddle his shyness to the extent of hiding his identity
from fellow-managers.
"I now have control of all the eight," said Sir Henry with lightness,
ineffectually trying to pretend that to have obtained the control of
eight such hotels was to a person built on his scale a mere trifle of an
achievement. "I don't say I've bought them. I've actually bought
one--and no doubt you can guess which one--but I have options which will
give me control of the other seven at any moment I choose."
"The Majestic?" said Evelyn, naming the establishment which Sir Henry
had bought.
Sir Henry nodded, smiling.
"Not a vast amount of profit-earning there," said Evelyn.
"On the hotel itself, no. But think of the real estate owned by the
company, my friend. Its value has appreciated by a good sixty per cent.
in the last fifteen years. And the figure they put it at in their
Balance Sheet is grotesquely below the value to-day."
"Quite. I agree. But you spoke of it as a serious rival to the Palace.
It isn't. They haven't even the sense to spend fifteen thousand pounds
on replacing their worn-out carpets and curtains. To say nothing of the
furniture."
"I haven't particularly noticed the carpets and curtains," Sir Henry
rather haltingly admitted.
"You will next time you go in there," Evelyn answered drily. But less
drily than he felt. For Savott's announcement had excited in him
sensations of admiring wonder. Though the man might show the foibles of
a Napoleon he had, too, a true Napoleonic grandeur of conception, and,
if he in fact held the boasted options, which he probably did, he
certainly had in addition a Napoleonic power to realise his conception.
As he stood there on the hearthrug in the comfortable modest room,
insulting a fine cigar by smoking it too quickly, he was tossing
millions about. And he had had the courage and the originality to love
and fight for the daughter of a small-town traveller; and the misfortune
to lose her. A few minutes earlier he had been a wistful emblem of
tragedy. He was still that emblem, for Evelyn; but he was a great deal
more now: he was an emblem of confident, imaginative might.
Evelyn marvelled at him, and pitied him. He wanted to say to him
eagerly, "You're a bigger chap than I thought." And he wanted magically
to raise Susan Powler from the dead, so that he might see a cherished
woman fold the ruthless giant in her honest arms and kiss away calamity
from those ferreting eyes, and by her homeliness reduce a colossus to
the human dimensions of a lover. Evelyn was thrilled.
"You've got eight," said he with feigned cold indifference; and paused.
"But you want nine."
II
"I want the Imperial Palace," Sir Henry exclaimed, and could not refrain
from a grandiose Napoleonic gesture. "If I can't bring the Imperial
Palace into my merger, I'll drop it. I could sell the Majestic at a
profit already. I would sell it. And I'd get rid of my options too. I'd
clear out of hotels and try something else. I haven't the least desire
to mess about with an affair if it's going to be only second-class.
Second-class isn't a bit my line. But I'll admit I don't want to clear
out of hotels. The luxury hotel, as you've made it, my dear Orcham,
seems to me to be the most characteristic of all modern creations. It
stands for the age, just as much as the Pyramids did for Egypt. Our age
can be proud of it--I mean as an organism. It's marvellous, and there
never was anything like it before. The luxury hotel----"
"What about the department-store?" Evelyn interjected.
"I agree," said Sir Henry quickly. "The department-store is just as
characteristic, _and_ original, as the luxury hotel. But as you probably
know, I've handled the department-store--both here and in Australia. My
department-store merger is a proved success--and half the City
prophesied failure for it. Well, that's done. And now I'm in for a
hotel-merger. Only, it must be first-class. Splendid! Gorgeous!
Something to sing about and write home about! Otherwise I wouldn't give
tuppence for it. Of course there've been hotel-mergers already. I expect
you know a lot more about my friend Hoster's merger than I do. It's
pretty big. I've no dependable information as to how it's doing. But
however well it's doing it wouldn't be good enough for me. To my nose it
smells of the suburban street and the provincial up from the country and
the conducted tour and God knows what else! No, no! The Imperial Palace
is the standard for me. And that's why I'm so keen on interesting you in
my proposition. Orcham, I'm damnably keen."
Evelyn was moved by the surprising lyricism of the City man. He was
beginning to glimpse the qualities which had lifted up Sir Henry to be a
figure in the world of high finance. His imagination was impressed--by
the revealed fact that Sir Henry had imagination. He beheld Sir Henry
with a satisfaction that was æsthetic. He was even ever so little
scared. But he showed none of his emotion.
"I can't quite understand this mania for mergers. It seems to me to mean
the destroying of individuality," he said. Nobody could be more
misleading, more mystifying, than Evelyn when his mind was fluid and he
had to play for time.
"Destroying of individuality!" cried Sir Henry. "Oh, hang it! I've let
the thing out." He seized the match-box.
"No, Savott!" Evelyn stopped him. "You can do most things in this room,
but you aren't allowed to re-light a good cigar." He stretched his arm,
plucked the extinct cigar from his guest's fingers, and threw it into
the fire. "Oblige me by taking a fresh one."
Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders humorously, and obliged, and resumed
his talk while lighting the fresh cigar.
"Destroying of individuality!" he repeated, muttering at first with the
cigar between his teeth. "You of all people to say that! Look at the
present case. It would mean the extension of _your_ individuality. It
would give your individuality a scope--a scope--well, you see my idea? I
won't say anything about your greatest abilities. But take your
efficiency. A merger means the spread of your efficiency; it means the
spread of the Imperial Palace standard. Is that nothing? Destruction of
individuality! Why! On the contrary! A merger always means increased
power and influence for the top-dog. And why is the top-dog the top-dog?
Why are you a top-dog?"
"Yes. But what about the under-dog?" Evelyn asked, thinking again the
thoughts which had stirred in his mind earlier about top-dogs and
under-dogs and middle-dogs.
"Its no use talking about under-dogs," said Sir Henry, with a transient
impatience. "Nothing can stop mergers. They've come, everywhere, in
everything. They're still coming, and they'll keep on coming more and
more. They're bound to. All big enterprises will get bigger, and small
enterprises will be swallowed up or go to hell. Bound to. I'm not a
scientist, and I couldn't make a very clear story of evolution. But I've
got the hang of it. And what I say is, the merger is evolution. Anyhow,
part of it. There it _is_! It may be a bit rough on a lot of people. But
what are you going to do about it? Pull it up with a jerk? You can't.
You might as well try to tie a rope to the moon and pull that up.
Evolution will go on. Where to? We don't know. At least I don't. Nor
care either. All I know is I feel in my bones I've got to go _on_. Do
you suppose I'm taking on this job for money? I've made money. I'm a
rich man, very rich. And I want money--want it all the time. I'm
interested in money, but I'm much more interested in my instincts. And
I'm sure my instincts are right. If they lead me to money, I can't help
that. Money's a side-issue. Pleasant enough, of course--but only a
side-issue. I'm pushing evolution forward. Somebody has to push it
forward, and I'm somebody. What will happen next, after mergers have had
a fair show? Who can tell? Not me. It doesn't concern me.
Something--call it God or Nature or what you please--something's put
certain instincts into my _bones_, I tell you. I'm not a religionist,
but I have a conscience. Yes, I'm conscientious. Sense of duty,
somewhere down inside me! And the duty is to use my instincts. Or let
them use me. I shouldn't like to say which it is. There might be some
bad consequences. Well, let there be! My conscience will be clear. And I
know jolly well there'd be some good consequences. And soon!"
"Does he think he's a besom and going to sweep me into a corner?"
thought Evelyn, sardonic. But Evelyn was bluffing to himself; for he
could feel that he was being swept up by the vigorous besom and already
on his way to the corner. The power of the City Napoleon loomed
formidably over him. "This fellow's situation precarious?" he thought,
recalling sinister rumours concerning the reality of Sir Henry's
position. "Rot! His position could never be precarious. And if one
situation went to smithereens he'd build another and a better one in
about half a minute. Still, that Resolution was a pretty wise
precaution." He had to fight against the impulse to enrol himself as a
partisan of Henry Savott.
He said aloud, in a voice that made Sir Henry's seem coarse and
rhetorical:
"As we seem to be talking, I may as well tell you that my sentiments
about the plight of the under-dog in this evolution of yours are rather
strong. In a place like this you get some very melodramatic contrasts,
and they make you think. And when I think for instance of you in your
suite, or me here, and then of some of the fellows and girls down in the
basements, I get a sort of a notion that there must be something wrong
somewhere. And your mergers aren't likely to do such a devil of a lot to
put it right. The reverse."
III
Sir Henry dropped smoothly into an easy-chair opposite Evelyn, and when
he spoke his restrained tone showed that he had accepted the reproof of
Evelyn's quietude.
"And hasn't there always been something wrong? And won't there always
be?" he enquired, almost insinuatingly. "When there are no under-dogs
the world will have to come to an end, because there won't be anything
to improve. Perfection's another name for death, isn't it? And I must
just ask you again: What are you going to do about it? About these
under-dogs? Mergers mean mass-production and lower prices. What's the
matter with this country is that there isn't enough mass-production.
Mass-production is the only chance for the under-dog, as far as I can
see."
Sir Henry had spoken slowly and more slowly. He paused. Then began
again, very low and very deliberate.
"I'm continually hearing about the soul-destroying monotony of organised
labour in these days. One man doing one tiny fraction of a job all day
every day. Well, that's part of the penalty of cheap prices. But people
forget that cheap prices aren't all penalty. They do have the advantage
of raising the purchasing power of the under-dog; therefore raising his
standard of life. Do you want to go back to the old methods? Even if you
could, you'd only raise prices and lower the standard of life. But you
couldn't go back. Because we simply don't go back. And do you want to
stand still? Everyone knows you can't stand still. Then you must go
forward. More mass-production! And--more machinery! I seem to see that
machinery may at last put an end to the under-dog. It may wipe him off
the earth by throwing him out of work. Well, somebody has to suffer.
Anyhow, when he's dead he isn't an under-dog. See here! On the voyage
over, this last week, I thought I'd have a look at the innards of the
ship. I thought they must be rather like a hotel, and I wanted to pick
up all I could in the hotel line. I did pick up some trifles. Of course
you know, but I didn't know, that there are no bottle-washers in those
big ships. All the washing-up's done by machinery, and the drying and
everything, and better done than any bottle-washer ever did it or ever
could do it."
"Oh yes!" said Evelyn. "All the big hotels have that machinery. Been in
use for years."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute." Sir Henry spoke more loudly, and with
some excitement. "There are no miserable bottle-washers any more in the
big shows. They're gone. They may have died of starvation, and their
families with them. But they're gone. No more monotonous, dirty, greasy,
soul-destroying labour for bottle-washers. Now that's all to the good.
That's what I call an advance. And lots of other under-dogs will follow
the bottle-washers. Frightful martyrdoms no doubt for a generation or
two. But it can't be helped. There is a chance that mass-production and
machinery will abolish the under-dog. There's no other chance. So in the
sacred cause of social progress I am determined to bear with fortitude
the present and future misfortunes of your under-dogs." Sir Henry
laughed grimly.
"You may be right," said Evelyn reluctantly. Then, a little ashamed of
this assumed reluctance, he added in a more sympathetic tone: "You
probably are right. Anyhow, it's soothing to the mind to think you
are.... But I'm afraid I've been leading you off the point."
"No, no!" Sir Henry amiably smiled. "I led myself. It was I who began
about dogs. However, I'll get back. I've nearly finished. I told you I'd
be perfectly open with you, and I will. It's a bit unusual for a buyer
to be enthusiastic about what he wants to buy. Doesn't help him in
bargaining, does it? I can't help that. I'm after the Imperial Palace,
and you know why. No one knows better. But the Imperial Palace would be
no earthly use to me without Mr. Evelyn Orcham. Without him I wouldn't
have it at any price. He _is_ the Imperial Palace. He brought it from
ruin to the most brilliant success in the shortest time on record. Of
course there are hotels that have started from nothing and succeeded
terrifically from the very day they opened. There are at least two in
London. And even Mr. Evelyn Orcham couldn't teach much to the fellows
that run them. Only they're cheap hotels. Even under-dogs--some
under-dogs--could stay in them for a day or two without being broke.
They aren't luxury hotels, and it's the luxury hotel and nothing else
that interests me. I want something I can look at, with women walking
around that I can look at, and money flowing out of pockets like water.
There's no fun in running a cheap hotel."
"Oh yes, there is," Evelyn contradicted.
"Well, naturally there is. I mean not my sort of fun, and your sort of
fun. I couldn't bear anything that I had a hand in to be spoken
slightingly of. I couldn't bear it! 'Must be funny kind of places,' I've
heard people--some of your visitors--say of those cheap hotels; and if
I'd been in control of the funny kind of places I should have knocked
the people down. Simply that. Because I couldn't have borne it. You
don't know me if you think I shouldn't. You understand me--what I mean?"
"Perfectly," said Evelyn. "I daresay I should feel the same. But I'm not
a prize-fighter."
"Well, I am," said Sir Henry with emphasis. "Off the point again!" He
sniggered; then suddenly became serious: "Now Mr. Evelyn Orcham isn't
merely the king of the hotel world. He's boss of the market in
hotel-managers. And there aren't any under-bosses. There's nobody but
him--for a buyer like me, who won't have anything but the best. He owns
the finest article in the market--himself--and he can put his own price
on it, without arguing. He's in the strongest position that any seller
could be in. You see, I realise all that, and I wouldn't pretend I
don't. I want to buy Mr. Evelyn Orcham. Damn it! Of _course_ I want to
buy him. He's the foundation-stone and the keystone and everything of my
blooming arch. And I'm ready to pay for him. And when I've got him safe,
I want to make him the head-god of the greatest hotel-combine that ever
was. Nine big luxury hotels! And I want him to put his stamp on all of
them, so that everybody can see the brand at a glance. I want everybody
in the luxury world to know that every one of those nine belongs to the
Orcham group--and nothing more need be said, no questions asked, no
doubts raised, no qualms, no fears, apprehensions. 'It's an Orcham
hotel. It's dear, but it's worth the money. You know where you are in
his shows.' That's how the luxury crew have got to talk among
themselves. And that's how they would talk, by God! Why! In London and
Madrid and Paris and San Remo and Cannes and Rome we should put every
other swell hotel out of business. Right out. We should divide the
luxury crew into two sections--those who had the sense and the money to
stay in an Orcham, and those who hadn't.... Now, Orcham, is it worth
your while to take the thing on? Or am I a ranting idiot?"
Evelyn answered at once:
"If you want my candid opinion, I should say that you don't coincide
very closely with my idea of a ranting idiot. But it isn't worth my
while to take the thing on. You see, I'm very fond of the Imperial
Palace. There's a genuine attachment between us. I'm happy here. I'm
content. I don't want anything else."
IV
Sir Henry jumped up from his chair, and began to eat his cigar instead
of smoking it.
"Then you will excuse me," he burst forth, stressing nearly every
syllable. "But what I say is you've no right to be happy and content
here. How old are you? You can't be fifty. Fancy any man under fifty
being happy and content! I'm a long sight older than you; but I'm not
happy and I'm not content. And I don't want to be, either. When I'm
happy and content I shall be so near to being dead that you wouldn't
notice the difference. Why man, if you're happy and content you might as
well say you haven't got anything else to live for! And what _would_ you
have to live for? You've made this place once, complete. You've
exercised your genius on it. You can't go on making it. It's made. All
you have to do is to keep it where it is. A touch here and a touch
there. No more. And your genius going to waste! Waste! You've realised
one ambition, and a jolly good ambition. You've created the finest
luxury hotel in the world. Haven't you got any more ambitions? Or are
you at the end? Under fifty! Shall you be satisfied to sit down and fold
your arms?" He spread out his arms, and then folded them. But folding
his arms did nothing to tranquillise his almost fierce excitement.
With a casual air Evelyn remarked:
"There isn't much sitting down and folding of arms about this place."
Dropping his arms, Sir Henry, cigar between teeth, went back to his
chair once again, sat down, and folded his arms anew, but with a comic,
apologetic gesture. He stared at Evelyn, faintly smiling.
"Excuse me!" he said, as it were ruefully and pleadingly. "I really do
beg you to excuse me. When I get keen I'm apt to--well, you know. So do
I know--curse it!" He showed considerable charm. Indeed for the moment
he was irresistible.
"Not at all!" said Evelyn, making no effort to resist, and with a smile
quite as charming as his guest's. "Not at all. You're very interesting.
A talk is a talk. Do go on." As a fact he found Sir Henry more than
interesting--acutely disturbing. But his reserve was a shield to him.
And although upon occasion he could, like Sir Henry, put all his cards
on the table, he chose not to do so on this occasion.
"Let me say just one thing more," Sir Henry said, ingratiating,
appealing, astonishingly placid after his fevered eloquence. "Your
talents _are_ being wasted here--in my opinion, that is. Are you
justified in wasting them? Perhaps you are. I'm merely asking the
question. There's still quite a great deal to do in the world. Perhaps
luxury hotels aren't the be-all and end-all of life. But they're a
factor. And they happen to be your field. And what we want more and more
to-day is efficiency. Efficiency is a speciality of yours. Why shouldn't
nine luxury hotels set an example of absolutely tiptop efficiency? Any
efficiency, particularly when it's spectacular, stimulates all other
efficiencies."
Sir Henry's voice died away. He rose slowly, and held out his hand.
"You aren't going?"
"Yes," said Sir Henry. "Thanks immensely for a perfect evening. I
couldn't have enjoyed an evening more."
"But----"
"Seems to me I ought to give you a chance to think it over. That's all I
ask. For you to think it over. No hurry. I should hate to hurry you.
You'll ring me up, or I'll ring you up. I'm not leaving the Palace yet.
I don't vanish out of hotels like Gracie. Au revoir. Your hospitality is
the sort I can appreciate. Of course, being in the Imperial Palace it
would be."
Evelyn shook hands unwillingly. At the door Sir Henry turned.
"And I say," he murmured with another rueful smile, "I rely on you to
forgive all the noise I've made."
He departed. The door banged.
Evelyn gently threw the last inch of his first evening cigar into the
fire.
"A masterly exit," he thought.
CHAPTER XXV
EARLY MORN
I
Evelyn had luck that night. He did not possess the Napoleonic gift of
sleeping at will and for any willed length of time. Indeed he seldom
slept uninterruptedly for more than three hours together, and he praised
God when God granted him a total of five and a half hours' sleep in
three instalments. He probably did not sleep well because he was not
very interested in sleep. What really interested him was waking up,
getting up, and satisfying himself by contemplation of the dawn that the
ancient earth was revolving as usual. But on just that night it
mysteriously happened to him to receive from heaven five hours' unbroken
sleep. So that he arose with full mental vigour in the morning twilight
and drew the curtains and raised the blinds and beheld glistening roofs
and clouds gliding above them from the eternal south-west; and began to
reflect upon a new problem, as eagerly curious about it as a child about
a new toy.
It was in these earliest morning hours, after a fair night, that Evelyn
most pleasantly savoured life. He had leisure then, more time than was
necessary for the due performance of what he called his 'chores.' He
possessed three dressing-gowns of different thicknesses. Oldham always
laid them side by side in an unvarying order on the back of his
easy-chair. He chose the one which seemed to him to suit the temperature
of the morning. He turned on the electric radiator. Steam-heating was
good enough for the visitors to the Palace, but not for its Director. He
turned on all the lights, for he liked the fullest illumination, saying
that whatever he was doing he preferred to see clearly what it was. He
beheld the room, and the tidiness of the room provided fresh
satisfaction every morning. Every morning was the beginning of the world
and of his existence. No clothes and no linen were ever left lying in
the room. Nothing was out of place: neither the books on the large
bed-table, nor the glasses and bottle and weekly papers and
cigarette-box on the square table behind the bed, nor the appointments
on the dressing-table, nor the pumps and slippers on the floor.
Now, he lit the finest cigarette of the day, and opened windows wide,
and, warm in his camel-hair gown, defied the tang of the air of sunrise.
He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and the encased watch on the
bed-table, and noted with relief and pride that they announced precisely
the same minute of the same hour. He considered what suit he would wear,
what shirt, what necktie, what handkerchief, what socks, what shoes. He
hated anew the prospect of shaving. He drank the celestial juice of two
oranges carefully distilled for him overnight by Oldham. He ate half a
handful of seedless raisins, also prepared for him by Oldham.
Among the books on the bed-table was an India-paper Bible. He scarcely
ever read it, but he liked to feel that in case he wanted to read it the
Bible was handy. On this morning he picked up the Bible, found the
Psalms, found the Forty-Sixth Psalm. Yes. There it was, the memorable
sentence: "Be still, and know that I am God." The sentence awed him. It
seemed to contain the whole wisdom of thirty centuries of human
experience. And he had lived for nearly fifty years in ignorance of it.
He repeated and repeated the sentence. But no better than on the
previous night could he have defined its significance, even to himself.
He strolled into the bathroom, strolled back, leaving the door ajar,
took off his dressing-gown, and, with customary conscientiousness,
performed blood-stimulating physical exercises on the floor and upright
in front of an open window. Then he shut the windows, resumed the
dressing-gown, and luxuriously, voluptuously, and a little breathlessly,
reclined in the easy-chair. One chore done!
As a rule at this stage of the day he read periodicals. But now he had
no desire to read. He wished to enjoy his mind. He was not given to
self-analysis. He would think out his plans, but the originating cause
of all his plans had little interest for him. He lived his life by deep
impulses into which he never enquired. He rather despised the
individuals who were always worrying themselves about themselves. His
attitude was God's: I am that I am. To wonder why he was what he was
hardly occurred to him. And whither he was going did not trouble him
more than whence he had come. He constructed no chart, wrote out no
annual balance-sheet. He merely knew, felt, that he had work to do and
that he was doing it pretty well and was thereby kept continually busy.
II
But to-day, in the freshness of the morning and the cherished order of
the room, he entered upon some sort of an examination of that unexplored
strange creature, Evelyn Orcham. At leisure, and secure from any
invasion, he began to reflect, not without mild excitement. He was
happy. Henry Savott had feverishly informed him that at his age he had
no right to be happy. Nevertheless he was happy. He damned Henry Savott.
Still, the man had impressed him. In his daily life Evelyn was more used
to bestow wisdom than to receive it. And to have positively explosive
instruction flung in his face with violence was to say the least
disconcerting.
The younger son of the Chief Customs Inspector of an important East
Coast port, Evelyn had been brought up with two extremely taciturn
men--his widowed father and his brother. The two men and the boy seldom
talked and never argued, even at meals. The two men showed no curiosity
about anything, and apparently thought that nothing was worth talking
about. Each was an individual island entirely surrounded by spiritual
solitude; and the boy became an island. The elder brother entered the
Customs service, married a girl who chattered incessantly, and reached
in course of time the chief inspectorship of another East Coast port.
His children were growing up. He asked no more from life. He never wrote
to Evelyn, nor Evelyn to him. Immediately on leaving school Evelyn heard
casually of a catering job at a provincial Exhibition, and on the
strength of a school reputation as organiser of field-excursions,
casually wandered off to get the job, and got it. Nobody either
encouraged or discouraged his enterprise of leaving home. He just
departed with an exchange of "Ta-ta, ta-ta." And he never saw his home
again. His father died while away on holiday, and at the funeral Evelyn
spoke about forty words to his brother and his brother about twenty
words to Evelyn. "Ta-ta, ta-ta," once more. Withal, the pair were
conscious of mutual esteem. Evelyn rose by step and step to the top of
his profession. When he arrived at the panjandrumship of the Imperial
Palace Hotel he sat down to write the news to his brother. But he
desisted and cast the sheet into the waste-paper basket, because he was
afraid that his grave and silent brother might reply on a post-card and
despise him for breaking the grand family tradition of taciturnity. All
he could be sure of about his brother was that he was not dead; for
tradition would assuredly have summoned him to a brother's funeral.
Once fairly established in the hotel world, Evelyn of course had to
learn the art, and especially the craft, of conversation. He learned it
as he might have learned mathematics or juggling or conjuring. He
talked, but he remained reserved. He had always been, and he still was,
reserved even with the person whom he least mistrusted--himself. At no
period of his wonderful ascent had he made many friends.
The career of hotel-management was as absorbing as that of
ship-captaincy. There were, in practice, no fixed, regular hours of work
for the chief and his immediate subordinates. During twenty hours daily,
from 6.30 a.m. to 2 a.m., the big hotel was as it were in full
navigation of the high seas; and during the poor brief remnant of the
twenty-four the vessel was not in port; she was only hove to. A critical
situation was as likely to supervene by night as by day. Evelyn's most
intimate friend was old Dennis Dover, and it was he who had late one
evening likened a big cosmopolitan hotel to a baby. "You _never_ dare
leave it," father Dennis had said. "The darned thing's always liable to
wake up before dawn and cry itself into convulsions if you aren't
there." The Imperial Palace Hotel tolerated no rival interests.
Everybody who served it became enslaved to it. The hotel took the place
of wife, children, friends, hobbies, sports.
Apparent exceptions occurred now and then; not, however, real
exceptions. Thus the sardonic middle-aged grill-room chef, Rocco, had
begun recently to flirt with golf; but his colleagues prophesied that
the affair would be flirtation and no more.
As for Evelyn, he had forsaken sports and pastimes many years ago. And
why should Evelyn embarrass himself with a pack of friends when he was
happy without them?
But on this particular morning he saw his present as well as his future
in the new searchlight directed upon them by Henry Savott. He was the
celebrated panjandrum of the Imperial Palace Hotel. He had 'got there.'
Good! And in ten years, in twenty? When he was approaching threescore
and ten, would he have retired--unthinkable--or would he still be the
panjandrum of the Imperial Palace Hotel? Would not the livelier of his
acquaintances and colleagues then be saying behind his back: "Yes,
terrific fellow! Made the place! Perhaps he's been there a bit too long.
Thirty years. In a groove. You can't teach him anything now?" Possibly
he was already fairly deep in a groove of habit and self-complacency.
Was it not true what Savott had said, that a touch here and a touch
there should suffice to keep the vast organism of the Imperial Palace in
the path of prosperity? Could he, Evelyn, deny that his talent for
imaginative efficiency was being to some extent wasted? He sat quiet,
and waited for inspiration. Without at all realising it, he was
fulfilling the behest of the Psalmists deity: "Be still, and know that I
am God."
He heard a faint whine. It was the sound of the vacuum-cleaner which
twice a week a chambermaid and a valet between them employed upon his
sitting-room. The day had started. The humble were abroad and active.
But how came it that he could hear the sound across the bathroom, in a
bedroom theoretically impervious to all noise? Ah! He had left the
bedroom door ajar. He rose and shut the door. The whine ceased to be
audible.
Could he successfully inspire the managers of eight hotels in four
different countries with his own spirit, energy, enthusiasm, tact,
tireless ingenuity in organisation? He might be able to teach Rome and
Madrid. But could he teach Paris and the Riviera; he an Englishman,
handicapped, despite his renown, by the fact of being a native of the
land which had the worst hotels in Europe? Well, he thought he could. He
knew he could. Already he could see how he would have to set about the
mighty task: stay in each of the hotels, say nothing, watch, praise,
study local conditions, allow for local standards; a touch here and a
touch there at first; cautious suggestions; then bolder strokes; a few
abrupt dismissals; exchanges of important members of staffs between one
hotel and another; promotions, degradations; soft answers; the iron
hand; encouragement of the larger harmony through transient violent
discords; flittings from city to city; rapid and frequent returns to
London to maintain the peace of the Imperial Palace, and to galvanise
and electrify the Majestic and the Duncannon into a more and more active
reforming energy.
There was the language difficulty. Absurd! He was inventing
difficulties. The entire hotel-world was polyglot. And he could speak
French admirably. He had learned French as he had learned conversation,
and for the same reason. And if he felt any apprehensions about Madrid,
which he had seen only once, he could take with him once or twice
Adolphe, the _chef de réception_ of the Palace, and the supreme linguist
of all the Palace staff.
The projected enterprise of modernising hotels made a fascinating
panorama in his mind. It was an enterprise perfectly suited to his
faculties. Had he not already conducted two similar enterprises to
triumph, in his beloved first-born, the Wey, and then in the Imperial
Palace? In both cases had he not performed the miracle of raising the
dead; and to what glorious life? In the privacy of his self-esteem he
doubted whether there existed on earth another man as fortunately
qualified as himself for the realisation of Savott's dream. By the way,
it was Savott's dream; not his own. And Savott might well be an
excellent man to work with. Savott would understand without too much
argument, because he had imagination.
Nevertheless Evelyn hated the visionary project. He shrank from the
sight of it, averting his eyes. Why shoulder the weight of ten thousand
new anxieties? Why wander homeless? Why leave the adorable habitual
comfort of his everlasting home? He feared, tremblingly hesitant. Ha!
The groove! Dramatic proof, this hesitation, that he was indeed already
sunk in a groove, that in his shelter he shivered at the mere thought of
the winds of the world. But supposing that he declined Savott's
offer--how would he feel afterwards for the rest of his life? Shamed,
remorseful, disappointed, stultified, lethargised? Would he not know in
his heart that he was a coward? Then he perceived a flaw in Savott's
grandiose scheme. It was not sufficiently grandiose. The fellow did not
know enough. He was missing the finest, the most glaring opportunity in
Europe. Deauville! There were only two authentic luxury hotels in
Deauville. Savott should have bought options on both of them. The
trouble in Deauville was the shortness of the season. But the season
ought to be lengthened, could be lengthened. That bright young man
Immerson, author and controller of the unique indirect publicity of the
Imperial Palace, had once in Evelyn's presence sighed for the chance to
do in Deauville what he had done in London and Weybridge. The Deauville
people had amazingly succeeded with their hotels, but they had not
succeeded in stretching their season. Their imagination lacked breadth
and sweep.
III
A quiet knock. Evelyn got up and walked to the right-hand window. Oldham
entered.
"Morning, Oldham," Evelyn greeted him, but without turning round.
"Morning, sir."
These two understood each other perfectly--not almost perfectly, but
perfectly. Evelyn's attitude towards Oldham was one of affection and
appreciation. Oldham's to Evelyn one of affection and devotion. Because
of his aversion for physical exercise and his inexhaustible interest in
eating, Oldham, who was five years younger than Evelyn, looked five
years older, and Evelyn always thought of him as older.
Once, a long time since, they had had a skirmish which might have
developed into a calamitous shindy if Evelyn had not had the presence of
mind to shut his own mouth. Oldham had valued that forbearance. It had
been reported to Evelyn, through the floor-housekeeper, that in a
quarrel with a chambermaid about their respective duties Oldham had
remarked: "If you think I'm a bloody chambermaid----" Evelyn had been
infuriated at such behaviour; less at the language used to a girl by a
respectable man of an age to be her father, than at the respectable
man's evident unfairness in presuming on the immense advantage of his
position as Evelyn's private and confidential servant. Evelyn was very
seldom infuriated; one might say never. But he happened to be himself
extremely punctilious in his demeanour to all his employees; he had a
special detestation of masters who were rude to their servants; and
Oldham's iniquity had taken him by surprise. Also, Evelyn's fury had
taken Oldham by surprise; and Oldham had retorted too soon, before he
had recovered from the surprise. The next day Oldham had briefly
expressed contrition, and the quarrel was over. They had never had
another. The first and last quarrel had seemed to draw them more closely
together; both had realised that a rupture would be desolating.
Evelyn had tried for years to put sense into Oldham about eating,
outdoor exercise, and personal tidiness. He had failed, and had
abandoned the efforts. He might have succeeded as regards personal
tidiness, if Oldham's gourmandise had not made him too stout to get into
Evelyn's cast-off suits. Instead of wearing these perquisites Oldham
sold them. As in all other matters Oldham was meticulously tidy, Evelyn
had accepted the situation.
"Striped," said Evelyn, still not turning round. (Each of Evelyn's suits
was christened with a short epithet.) "Black-and-white shirt, black tie,
black French shoes." He said nothing about socks because socks had to
match the tie.
"Yes, sir.... Excuse me, sir," said Oldham. "Mrs. O'Riordan is unwell
and thinks she ought to stay in bed. She would be very much obliged if
you could go and see her after breakfast. That was the message, sir."
His shocked tone said: "Yes, that's the message, and I give it you, but
it's the biggest piece of cheek I ever heard of in this hotel, and I beg
to take no responsibility for it. _You_ going to see the housekeeper
because she's 'unwell,' as she calls it!"
"All right," said Evelyn, absently. "Remind me."
"Yes, sir."
Evelyn himself perceived not the enormity of the message, but at the
back of his brain, behind the circling thoughts concerning his presence
and his future, he was somewhat disturbed. He guessed: "It must be about
the new floor-housekeeper. She wants to settle that business at once,
and I may have some trouble with the old girl." At last he turned to go
into the bathroom. Oldham had switched on the light in the huge
wardrobe-cubicle which gave on to the bedroom and which held the whole
of Evelyn's attire. The man was handling a pair of trousers.
"Here! Steady!" Evelyn enjoined him. "I told you the striped, not the
broad stripe."
When Evelyn had bought a second striped suit the new one had been dubbed
'broad-stripe' to distinguish it from the old one.
"Sorry, sir," Oldham apologised, after a brief pause for cerebration, in
the thick, obscure tone which always indicated that he was secretly
worried. Indeed the audacity of Mrs. O'Riordan was still abrading his
sensitive nerves so loyal to Evelyn.
Evelyn passed into the bathroom, where Oldham had already made every
minute customary preparation for the morning rites. The spectacle of the
sacred traditional disposition of the bathroom appealed pleasurably
every day to Evelyn's passionate sense of order. Razor, razor-towel,
chair, bath-towels, mat, mirror, soaps, height and temperature of water
in the bath--each item was arranged strictly in accordance with the
changeless daily formula. And he enjoyed the spectacle this morning, but
absently.
He was not thinking of Mrs. O'Riordan. He was thinking:
"What am I alive for? What is my justification for being alive and
working? I cannot keep on creating the Palace. I have created it. The
thing is done. I can't do it again."
For the first time he was addressing to his soul the terrible
comprehensive question, which corrodes the very root of content in the
existence of millions of less fortunate people, but which had never even
presented itself to Evelyn until the previous night:
"Why?"
If Henry Savott's proposition could not furnish the answer to the
question, what could? As late as within the last twenty-four hours--nay,
twelve hours--he had been condemning Savott's scheme as a dastardly and
hateful conspiracy to be countered at any cost. Only a minute ago he had
been hating it. But now the visionary project was changing its
appearance; and in spite of himself he saw in it the chance of
salvation--he who but a little earlier would have derided any hypothesis
that he needed salvation.
He shaved with cautious tranquillity. He lay long in the warm water; and
as he lay a lamp seemed to be ignited in his brain, and it burned up
slowly into a steady flame which illuminated the whole of his brain. And
it was the figure and symbol of Savott's scheme, and the one veritable
answer to that dread conundrum: why was he alive, and why should he go
on living? And though he tried to pretend that his brain was dark, he
could not, because of the convincing brightness of the lamp. And even
when, reluctantly, he withdrew himself from the warm water and with a
towel violently rubbed his skin as if he would rub out the flame itself,
it still burned unwaveringly. And Evelyn had to carry the lamp into the
bedroom. In the bedroom he beheld all his clothes laid out according to
formula and with the zealous accuracy of a man who knew why he was alive
and had found the reason completely satisfactory.
Then, while he was seated at the mirror tying his cravat, there was a
tap on the door and the door opened, and Oldham entered, consternation
on his pale, flabby face.
"Mrs. O'Riordan is in the sitting-room, sir," said Oldham, ashamed,
shocked by his own tidings.
"What?"
With admirable presence of mind Evelyn neither turned his gaze from the
mirror nor ceased to tie the cravat.
"She wants to see you at once, sir."
"Who let her into the room?"
"She came in, sir."
"But I thought she was ill."
"Yes, sir."
"What time is it?"
"Twenty minutes to eight, sir."
"Now, look here, Oldham." Evelyn swung round on the chair. "Get her out.
Use your famous tact. Say I'm late. Say I'm not dressed. Tell her I'll
come along and see her in her own room as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir," Oldham agreed, doubtfully, and departed.
Evelyn had not been able to extinguish the lamp, but this unparalleled
occurrence extinguished it. Scarcely could he believe what he had heard.
What! A member of the staff invade his sacred castle, and before
breakfast! Such an act was unheard of in all the history of Evelyn's
panjandrumship. Nobody dared to come into his castle, save upon special
request and as a favour--and never on hotel business. Mrs. O'Riordan
must have had one of her rare nerve-storms. But even so----! He was all
spruce and ready to leave the bedroom before Oldham returned.
"Well?" he asked, showing anxiety despite an effort to hide it.
"She's gone, sir."
"Was she dressed?"
"Well, sir, she was _dressed_, as you might call it."
"What do you mean?"
"A neg_lee_jay, sir." Oldham departed once more.
Evelyn passed through the now disordered and sloppy-floored bathroom
into the sitting-room, which was as clean and bright as a new pin. He
rang the bell, sat down to the breakfast table, and opened "The Times."
First he looked at the City page and noted that Imperial Palace shares
had risen one-eighth. Good! Then he turned to the obituaries and to the
announcements of betrothals, weddings, births, deaths, dinner-parties,
receptions; for it was part of his work, as of Cousin's and Adolphe's
and Cappone's and Ruffo's, to maintain close familiarity with the daily
annals of the great self-advertising world. Then on the Sports page his
eye caught a paragraph about Woolwich Arsenal Football Club. Then Oldham
brought in breakfast.
"I say, Oldham," he enquired with seeming vivacious interest. "What's
this about the Arsenal this season?"
He hoped to get one up on Oldham in the matter of football news, but as
usual his hope was disappointed. Oldham had seen the news in another
paper, his own, where it was a front-page item. The man's sole
distraction was Association Football. As a slim youth he had played
centre-half. He seldom attended a match; in fact he attended a match no
oftener than he attended his wife, who lived in a Berkshire village. But
he always knew all about all teams, players, matches. The desire of his
life was to win a £1,000 prize offered by a Sunday paper for twenty-two
correct results. He had never got beyond eighteen; and Evelyn prayed
that he would stick eternally at eighteen, lest £1,000 in cash might
ruin him both as a man and as a valet. Evelyn had no curiosity whatever
about Association Football, or about Rugby either; he kept a careless
attention on Association news solely in order to be able to discuss it
intelligently with Oldham, who loved to display his vast knowledge. This
morning they talked at some length. But the conversation was a piece of
bravado, a horrible and unconvincing make-believe. Both were
humiliatingly aware of its false character. Each knew that the other was
obsessed, worried, appalled, overset by Mrs. O'Riordan's shocking,
incredible invasion in a _négligé_. Both had been unmanned thereby. But
each, nevertheless, was nobly determined to play the intrepid man in
face of insulting behaviour and oncoming trouble.
Oldham left. In five minutes he came back, freighted with still worse
news.
"Mr. Plimsing is outside, sir," said he, having carefully shut the
doors. "Wishes to see you, sir."
"What next?" cried Evelyn, pushing away his plate with a gesture
betraying serious agitation. Oldham intensified the woe in his visage.
"What did you tell him?"
"Nothing, sir."
Evelyn raised his voice slightly:
"Well, tell him this. Tell him I can't see him here. Tell him I'll see
him in my office at nine o'clock. No. I'll see him here at nine o'clock.
And not before. I don't care how urgent his business is. I wonder what's
come over the place this morning!"
Mr. Plimsing was the hotel-detective; formerly in the C.I.D. of Scotland
Yard.
CHAPTER XXVI
NERVE-STORM
I
"How sweet of you to come!" murmured Mrs. O'Riordan sweetly, as Evelyn
entered her sitting-room.
She reclined on a sofa which had been drawn up near the hearth, where a
small fire burned. Her slim body was enveloped in a rosy _négligé_, a
magnificent garment. Her head rested on a small white embroidered
pillow, under which were three variegated and ribboned cushions. She
smiled with a coquettish consciousness of grace, of the exceeding
neatness of her grey-white coiffure, of the rouged and powdered finish
of her lips and complexion, and of the elegance of her wrists and
manicured hands emerging from the lacy sleeves. But the most elegant
thing on the sofa was a black cat, curled up on the eiderdown covering
her feet. Mrs. O'Riordan's attitude and demeanour combined those of a
Madame Récamier and an Olympia, inviting, refusing, teasing, voluptuous,
intelligent.
The room was over-full of furniture and knicknacks and flowers.
Portraits of men, women and mansions thronged the walls. The room was a
boudoir. But in one hand Mrs. O'Riordan held some letters, and at her
side, on a pouf, sat a young, pink-faced, short-frocked secretary,
notebook open on knees. The Récamier, the Olympia, the odalisque had
been dictating answers to correspondence.
Evelyn's apprehensions momentarily vanished at the warm spectacle of the
domestic interior. He thought: "I can deal with this all right." And he
thought what a shame it was that such a woman, such a cunning piece of
femininity, should be compelled by fate to knit her brows over business
when she ought to be occupied solely with her ageless charm, the
attractions of her boudoir, and the responsiveness of men to her fine
arts. Monstrous it was that she, whose function in life was obviously to
scatter money, should have to earn it, and in order to earn it should be
dictating letters at 8.30 a.m. The whole situation was against nature.
He had always known, or at any rate guessed, that Mrs. O'Riordan was
somewhat ardently feminine; but never before had he had such evidence of
her temperament. The sight amounted to a sudden revelation; for he had
not been in her sitting-room for years, and not once had he seen her in
aught but the strict shining head-housekeeper's black.
He said nothing, waved his hand vaguely as though it held his stick,
waited.
"Shoo! Run!" said Mrs. O'Riordan to the little secretary, frowning,
rather crossly. In an instant her face had assumed its smile.
"She's wound up; all nerves; a bit hysterical," thought Evelyn.
The little secretary jumped to her feet, and, with a shy, pleasant
glance at Evelyn, obediently hurried out of the room.
"You don't look ill," said Evelyn. "What's this I hear about you being
ill?"
"Pleurisy," said Mrs. O'Riordan.
"Pleurisy?" he exclaimed.
"Oh! If you don't believe me, just look." She raised her head and
shoulders, and with one hand pulled down the _négligé_ at the back,
exposing one shoulder-blade and the edge of a white undergarment. "Come
nearer and look." It was a command that she uttered. Evelyn saw the ends
of a series of strips of plaster.
"You see how he's plastered me all up."
"Who?"
"Dr. Constam of course." Dr. Constam was the young hotel-doctor. "So
that when I move, the pleura won't rub. I sent for him before seven
o'clock. I had such a sharp pain. It's only a very slight attack, but it
_is_ pleurisy." She lowered her head on to the pillow. "And that's not
all. He says there's something funny about my liver. Well, I always knew
there was. The gall-bladder isn't working properly. But otherwise I feel
very well. Only he's told me I must keep as quiet as I can. As if I
could!"
"And your idea of keeping quiet is to come down to see me before I'm
dressed!" said Evelyn, with a gentle, sardonic smile.
"You aren't very sympathetic. Pleurisy's pleurisy, you know. It's
nothing yet; but it might be very serious if it wasn't taken in hand at
once. I've had it before."
"Well, you ought to be in bed, then."
"I am in bed, practically. I'm only lying here while my bed's being
made. He says I mustn't eat any fats--that's because of the
gall-bladder, or drink any alcohol--or as little as I can. I shall
certainly drink _some_. I came down to see you because I just couldn't
wait. I know it was very naughty of me. I know you're God. Mr. Cousin
thinks he's God too, but he isn't. Do sit down. I want to talk to you."
"Very well. But oughtn't you to leave everything till you're better?"
"No, I oughtn't," said Mrs. O'Riordan. Evelyn was moving about the room,
carelessly examining the portraits. "And please do sit down. You fidget
me. Please!"
Evelyn sat, at some distance from the sofa, on a chair by the sideboard.
Yes, he thought, Mrs. O'Riordan was in a strange, sensitive mood, a mood
surprising to him. She had ceased to be an employee. He had ceased to be
the Director of the Imperial Palace. He was a man, and she was a woman,
and she knew her power and was using it with a grand, impetuous
disregard of their relative positions. Despite her alleged maladies, she
seemed to be uplifted, and responsive; Evelyn felt uplifted also. He
enjoyed his plight. The cat stood up on Mrs. O'Riordan's hidden ankles,
yawned, arched its back, and gazed at Evelyn with real contempt.
"Well?" Evelyn calmly encouraged the invalid, folding his hands and
crossing one knee over the other. He said to himself that Mrs. O'Riordan
would have to look much more like a sick woman than she did before he
could behave to her as one. He had, however, quite forgiven her
scandalous and untimely invasion of his castle.
"It's about Miss Brury," said Mrs. O'Riordan, stroking the cat, which
had strolled up to her shoulders. "Darling!" (This to the cat.) "She
came to see me last night. She wants to be taken back. She cried and I
cried, and any woman with any heart would have cried. This notion that
men have that women are hard on one another is ridiculous. It's men that
are hard on women, and don't we know it! Alice says she hasn't got a
penny--gives all she has to her married sister, who has about a thousand
children--what a husband!--and she simply daren't ask for another place
because everyone will know what happened here. And why shouldn't she
come back? Tired to death, and she has to deal with a drunken thief in
the cloak-room----"
"Drunken?"
"Yes."
"You never said that before."
"Because I didn't think of it. And Miss Brury didn't either.
Good-natured women don't think these horrid things of one another. But
it occurred to me all of a sudden. And so I sent down to Cappone to find
out what that precious party had had to drink. Hock. A bottle and a half
of champagne. Three ports, and three Armagnacs. She must have been
drunk--or half-drunk. But some of them hide it so cleverly. So I went to
see Mr. Cousin immediately. This was last night. He was just leaving,
and I kept him over three-quarters of an hour, and glad I am I did too!
What annoys me in Mr. Cousin is he's always so calm. It's
unnatural--especially in a Frenchman. A Frenchman ought to know that a
woman with something on her mind hardly likes talking to a stone wall.
Well, Mr. Cousin doesn't seem to know that. He just said Alice couldn't
be taken back, and she couldn't and she couldn't and she couldn't. The
pain I had got worse and worse. I told him I was very unwell, but do you
suppose he cared? No more than you do, Mr. Orcham!"
"I'm very sorry," said Evelyn.
"Yes. You look as if you are! You wouldn't see me before because you
were in your braces, and now you're twiddling your thumbs and you're
'very sorry.'" Mrs. O'Riordan laughed with a surprising attractiveness
which her remarks belied.
Evelyn, fearing that her gaiety might at any moment turn to hysterical
sobbing, smiled with prudence. But he remained in a condition secretly
uplifted.
II
"I'm afraid we can't have Miss Brury back at the Palace," he said.
"Of course you men always agree."
"But I'll find her another place, if you really want me to."
"Where?"
"Well, at the Laundry."
"At the _Laundry_!"
"Why not?"
"Oh, nothing! Only it's an insult. I haven't trained Alice to iron
shirts and pants."
"She might be staff-manageress. It's an excellent job."
"Glad to hear it!" said Mrs. O'Riordan, with charming scorn. But in
spite of herself she was a little bit dashed by the splendour of the
offer. She went on: "Of course when a girl's in a hole, through no fault
of her own, and hasn't a penny, you can safely humiliate her, and she's
obliged to thank you for humiliating her. Don't I know! I daresay you
think I'm being impudent."
"Not at all," Evelyn replied blandly. "I like you when you're very
ill--like this."
And he did. Instead of resenting her present lack of self-control, he
admired, as never before, the extraordinary self-control which almost
continuously for years and years she had managed to maintain in the
past. He appreciated, now, the tremendous effort which it must have
entailed for her: keeping the peace among a pack of women and girls;
mollifying and kowtowing to a pack of hypercritical visitors; trying to
prevent the unscrupulous visitors from stealing coat-hangers and
ashtrays and even electroplate--for the Palace, like all hotels, was no
better than a den of well-dressed thieves; watching over the
sewing-repairs; placating the Works Department, especially when trouble
arose between the Works carpenters and her own private carpenters who
carpentered exclusively within the hotel; pestering and being pestered
by the electricians; dictating her wordy letters; passing on complaints
about room-meals to the grill-room chef; dashing herself against the
insensate rock which was Mr. Cousin; getting up early and going to bed
late; always, always being sweetly diplomatic with the panjandrum; and
always, always pretending that she allowed nothing to worry her or ever
would! She, the Olympia-Récamier on the couch! She was marvellous. Let
her break out. Let her be impudent. Let her be as womanish as she chose.
She had earned the right to be so. The truth indeed was that brief
intercourse with Gracie Savott had somehow given Evelyn a new insight
into women and quickened his sympathy for them. Strange, considering the
way Gracie had behaved! But it was so.
"Oh! So you like impudence!" She raised her eyebrows seductively, and
her clear voice was seductive.
"Yes, when it's yours, mother."
"Please don't call me mother," she snapped, in quite another voice,
frowning suddenly.
"You darling!" he nearly said as he cajolingly smiled, as to a petulant
young beauty. What was wrong with her? Was it merely liver and a touch
of pleurisy? Everyone referred to her as mother. She frequently, with
pride in her tone, referred to herself as mother. He himself, and
several others in the hierarchy, often addressed her as mother.
"Sister," he corrected aloud, while sustaining the smile.
"I hate to be called mother, and if you're so hard on poor Alice Brury I
can't understand why you should make such a fuss about chambermaids
having to open their bags and things to that brute Maxon. Yes, I got
your note. I didn't answer it because I was so angry. Of course it's not
nice for girls to have to open their bags. Did you imagine we hadn't
thought of it? As a matter of fact, I long since started a system of
them showing their bags to their housekeeper. But housekeepers can't
always be on the spot to O.K. the bags with a bit of chalk. And even if
they are, what's to prevent the girls from getting a friend to hand them
something on the stairs as they go down? It all seems easy and simple to
you; but you're a man and you don't know. Any chambermaid could get the
better of you. Chambermaids are awful. They'd leave as soon as look at
you. And you have to be after them the whole damn time. Just ask Miss
Maclaren. She could tell you a few things. Chambermaids, oh yes! But
when it comes to Alice Brury, who's been _perfect_, you're absolutely
flinty, you and your Mr. Cousin!"
Evelyn said:
"But it mustn't be forgotten that the unhappy Alice left us at a
moment's notice. I mean without any notice at all."
"Yes," cried Mrs. O'Riordan. "And that's what I'm going to do! I'm too
young for this place. That's what's the matter with me!"
Her voice had risen sharply. She had been lying on her back. Now she
twisted her body a little, laid one cheek on the embroidered pillow, and
threw her right arm over her face. The letters slipped from her right
hand and floated down to the carpet. The cat jumped after them and they
rustled beneath its paws. A strange sound was heard--Mrs. O'Riordan
sobbing. Evelyn, in accordance with his habit when he could not decide
what to do, did nothing. He was startled.
"She'll get over this," he thought. "It's the beginning of the end of
the nerve-storm. She'll be through in about a minute now. Then she'll be
sorry. They're always like that."
He had never conceived the Imperial Palace without its mother. Probably
nobody had. But to his own surprise the conception of the Imperial
Palace without its mother at once attracted him. She was charming,
efficient, conscientious. Still, she was undeniably sixty-two; and who
could go on for ever? Already several times it had occurred to Evelyn
that 'if anything happened'--and who _could_ go on for ever?--there was
always Miss Maclaren, who was Scottish--better than being English, Welsh
or Irish!--had worked on every floor of the hotel in turn, and had
carried on quite smoothly in the stead of Mrs. O'Riordan during the
mother's last summer holiday. If mother had died, the Imperial Palace
would have survived, and if mother chose to retire the Imperial Palace
would survive. Emile Cousin at any rate would support the blow with
fortitude. The slowly developing antipathy between those two had been
causing some mild concern to Evelyn. Nevertheless the retirement of
mother, if indeed she really meant to retire, would be a mighty and
reverberating event in the domestic life and politics of the Palace.
III
Mrs. O'Riordan, having ceased to sob, was softly weeping; but she had
presence of mind enough to draw a handkerchief from a pocket inside her
_négligé_ and dab her eyes. Evelyn saw her gazing at him from under her
arm. The eyes were glinting and gleaming at him.
"You might rescue those letters from the cat," Mrs. O'Riordan murmured.
Evelyn obeyed.
"You're better now, aren't you?" he said, bending over her. "Perhaps you
could sleep a little."
"Better!" she said, with amazing swift brightness and lightness. "I
couldn't be better. I was only crying because I'm so happy. I'm much too
happy to sleep. Sleep! I wouldn't sleep for anything! I'm going to be
married. That was _really_ why I came down to see you this morning--to
tell you! I wanted you to be the first to hear about it. But when you
walked in here I didn't know just how to begin. You frighten me. You
frighten everybody."
Evelyn moved away, laughing.
"Well, I don't see anything to laugh at," the mother protested.
"I was only laughing because I'm so happy--in your happiness," Evelyn
retorted. "May one ask who is the favourite of fortune?"
Mrs. O'Riordan sat up and faced her employer.
"Colonel Sir Brian Milligan, Bart.--age sixty-eight, if you don't mind."
She gazed at Evelyn in splendid triumph. "Look at me," her gaze seemed
to say to him. "I'm the future Lady Milligan. And I _am_ too young to be
the mother of this hotel. I'm young enough to catch a man and hold him
even if I am only a hotel-housekeeper. Any man, except cold-blooded
fishes like you and your Frenchman!"
Evelyn's eyes glistened with pleasure. He was proud of mother,
enraptured with her conquest. He knew something about Milligan, who was
an irregular diner and luncher in the grill-room and had once spent a
few nights in the hotel. How clever of her to entrance and enchant this
not-unknown figure of a Colonel! And the future Lady Milligan would
conscientiously and brilliantly play her part in the affair. She had
presided in drawing-rooms before, and she would preside in drawing-rooms
again. No more early mornings for her, no more business correspondence,
organisings, diplomacies, self-repressions, unnatural deprivations! She
would be able to be fully her natural self. She would be petted,
spoilt--she would see to that! She would lead the fine old fellow a
dance; but so delicately, so deliciously! Do him good too! She who was
'too young' at sixty-two, she who would never be old, would rejuvenate
him in spite of himself. Had she not been young enough to invade even
Evelyn's castle in her girlish anxiety to announce the tidings? And
Evelyn was the first to know!
He secretly chuckled at the thought of the liveliness of the married
life of those two, and of the surprises that awaited Sir Brian. Some of
the surprises would be exquisite, some not. No! They would all be
exquisite, but some would be disturbing. Her nerve-storms would test his
masculine calm and authority. She would never go too far. She would
always win, while often appearing to lose. She was infernally clever.
Had she not been clever enough to hide the growth of the extraordinary
idyll from all the world? How she had managed that, Evelyn neither knew
nor cared. She had managed it.
"He's rich, isn't he?" he asked.
Mrs. O'Riordan's demure reply was:
"We are very fond of one another. Very fond. I adore him--but don't tell
him that when you meet him--and I shall try my hardest to make him
happy."
Evelyn accepted the rebuke.
"You'll succeed," he said. "It's a certainty."
"Of course," she said. "At my age I don't want to be silly and talk
about passion. And yet----" She stopped, and smiled innumerable
implications. "You know, his father lived to be ninety-eight, and got
himself into frightful trouble with a house-maid three years before he
died. And Brian's exactly like a boy. D'you know, he writes poetry!
Nobody sees it but me, and he makes me tear it up. At least he thinks he
does. Naturally I keep it. I wouldn't destroy it for anything. I mean of
course I do tear up the paper, but I learn it off first. He'd be furious
if he knew. He's very passionate, by temperament. I've told you his age.
But what's that? Sixty-eight--and a boy!"
"And you're twenty-two," said Evelyn. "The six is a misprint for a two."
"You are nice," she said, with sudden tenderness.
"I feel nice," said Evelyn. He did. He thought he had never been so
happy, never beheld a spectacle so ravishing as the spectacle of the
feminine half of this idyll. "When are you going to get married?"
"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Riordan, mother and head-housekeeper of the Imperial
Palace Hotel. "That will depend on you. I won't leave you in the lurch."
Evelyn had an impulse to say:
"You can leave now. You can get married to-morrow. You can begin your
honeymoon to-morrow night." But he checked himself. He would not wound
her by implying that a personage so important could be dispensed with as
easily as an Alice Brury, could depart and leave no trace of difficulty
behind.
He said:
"Now listen to me, bride. This hotel will not be allowed to interfere
with your happiness. You make your plans, and this hotel will fit in
with them. I know you're the impatient sort."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You do all you can to hide it, but if you imagine you've
hidden it from me you're wrong."
"But what shall you do?"
"Oh! Never mind. Something."
"But I do mind," she objected plaintively, touchily. "I'm very
interested."
"Of course you are.... Well, what about raising Miss Maclaren to the
throne?"
"She's rather Scotch and stolid."
"She may be. But she's a rock."
"Yes. But she's rather young for the post."
Evelyn laughed.
"I like that," said he. "I like that from you, of all people. Here I've
been entrusting the entire place to a girl of twenty-two for years and
years, and now I'm told Miss Maclaren's too young!" Mrs. O'Riordan gave
a pouting, delighted smile. "However, we'll talk it over." He decided
that he would not ask her approval of Violet Powler. Why should he? New
appointments were no longer any concern of hers. He would only formally
submit the girl to her. "I must go now. Remember what I said, please.
The hotel shall fit into your plans. By the way, I suppose I can tell
the staff?"
"About me? I wish you would. I'm rather nervous about telling them
myself."
"I'll tell them. And I'll come in and see you later in the day when I'm
somewhat calmer, and wish you every happiness. And you do as you're
ordered and go to bed." He went to the door; then paused. "We shall give
you a dinner. I mean the heads of departments. Not more than thirty.
Quite informal. I shall ask Mr. Dover too."
"My dear sir," said Mrs. O'Riordan. "You mustn't. I couldn't bear it. I
should feel so----"
"We shall give you a dinner," Evelyn repeated. "And you'll bear it
magnificently. Of course you'll cry. But they'll all love to see you
cry. I expect I'm the only person who _has_ seen you cry--and me only
this once.... I must run."
Mrs. O'Riordan shook her head.
"Not a dinner," she weakly murmured.
"Yes, a dinner. I suppose you expect a wedding-present. What would Sir
Brian think if we let you go without giving you a wedding-present? Well,
there'll be a dinner. No dinner, no present."
He kissed his hand to her and left. The next instant he returned, into
the room, mischievous.
"I say," he smiled, "it seems you can't keep off your Irish Colonels.
Getting quite a habit with you."
She was fondling the cat, whose purring was clearly audible. She said,
with dignity:
"Not at all. Sir Brian was a friend of both my husbands."
"And no doubt he has a house in County Meath," Evelyn pursued, not to be
dashed.
"And what if he has?" She laughed self-consciously, frowning as well as
laughing.
"I knew it," said Evelyn.
He walked back to his room with the studied sedateness proper to a
panjandrum. But he was in the highest spirits.
CHAPTER XXVII
CRIME
I
"Good morning, sir," said Plimsing, who was waiting outside the gates of
Evelyn's castle.
"Morning, Plimsing," said Evelyn, looking at his watch. "One minute
late. Sorry to keep you. Come in. What is it?"
Plimsing raised his left arm. He never lost a fair chance to consult his
wrist-watch, which was ornamented with diamonds and the Spanish royal
insignia.
"If the trains on the Southern Railway were only a minute late, sir,
life would be much simpler for some of us," said Plimsing, with a
courtly Foreign Office air. He lived beyond the Crystal Palace.
Evelyn smiled almost ingratiatingly. Like all respectable people, he was
conscious of a desire to stand well with policemen, and when he met them
would instinctively suit his demeanour to the occasion.
Not that the hotel-detective was a policeman; nor ever had been. Tall,
burly and fair, rosy-cheeked, with a large fair moustache, he had the
appearance of a beef-fed British farmer, except that his black suit,
including a morning coat, and his gleaming tie-pin, showed a little more
smartness of style than the agricultural. But he did also resemble a
policeman, and in mackintosh overalls and white armlet he would not have
seemed out of place conducting the orchestral traffic of Piccadilly
Circus on a wet day.
He was still appreciably under fifty. As an officer
(detective-inspector) of the Criminal Investigation Department at
Scotland Yard he had been allowed, thanks to his fluency in a language
which he imagined to be French, to specialise in the protective
surveillance of distinguished foreign official visitors to London. Also
on similar duty he had accompanied British princes abroad. It was soon
after the vicissitudes of the war that Evelyn had put a spell upon him,
to the detriment of Scotland Yard, with which, however, Plimsing's
relations had remained intimate and very cordial. Outside the hotel
Plimsing usually referred to the Imperial Palace as 'my hotel.' He used
in professional conversation such words and phrases as 'police-circles,'
'we' (meaning 'we police'), 'subtle individual,' 'one of your
super-prostitutes,' 'energetic action,' and 'H.R.H.' How his vigilance
for potentates, politicians and princes specially fitted him for the
preservation of order and common honesty in a large hotel neither he nor
anybody else could have said: certainly not Evelyn; but it gave him a
tremendous prestige with visitors, and a lot of prestige even with
Evelyn, who had chosen him partly on that account, but more because of
his quiet, composed manner and voice, and his twinkling, rather naïve
expression. Despite his expression he talked of the worst turpitudes and
immoralities of hotel-thieves, men and women, with the bland casualness
of a clergyman discussing the weather. Apparently no infamous vagary of
human nature could surprise him or in the least degree trouble his calm
of a virtuous householder residing in an impeccable suburb somewhere
beyond the Crystal Palace. In short, he was as entirely benign as a
policeman holding up a hundred motor-cars for the passage of a
perambulator.
"What is it?" Evelyn repeated, within the room. They both stood.
"Rather a busy morning, sir," Plimsing began, fingering his tie-pin,
which carried the British royal insignia. "I happened to be here early
on another matter when I received information to the effect that the
second-floor valet being called to room 532 went in and left his
pass-key in the door. This procedure was of course quite contrary to
regulations, and I have told him so. When he came out the pass-key was
gone. As I said to him, I take a very serious view of this culpable
negligence; for, as I need not point out to you, sir, even if the
pass-key came back a duplicate of it could have been made in the
meantime. I regarded it as so serious that I took the liberty of calling
here to tell you at once, as Mr. Cousin was not yet on duty. However,
it's all right, sir. Since I saw Oldham I made enquiries, and on the
strength of certain information received I telephoned to Scotland Yard,
having two individuals in my mind's eye, and they sent an officer in an
express car to the Majestic, where both individuals were arrested, and
on being searched one man was found to have the pass-key in his
left-hand hip-pocket. Smart work, sir, if I may say so, having taken no
part in the identification."
"Very. Most satisfactory," said Evelyn.
"I may add that I should have gone to the Majestic myself, sir, to take
observations; but I was prevented by an Amsterdam diamond merchant, also
fifth-floor, who was just leaving and could not find a pair of trousers,
which he alleged must have been stolen during the night. After some
search and a little cross-examination I convinced him that he was
wearing them. He was so apologetic that I ventured to ask him if he
would let me drive with him to Victoria, as he was going to Paris by the
8.20 Newhaven-Dieppe. He did so, and gave me valuable information about
diamonds, of which he had a large quantity on his person, in a
receptacle stitched to the back of his necktie, sir. I was glad to know
this. He invited me to feel them, which I did."
II
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn, somewhat impatiently. "I'm rather
pressed for time. Mrs. O'Riordan is leaving us, and I have to make
arrangements." He gave the enormous news with an intonation as casual as
he could assume. He could no longer keep it to himself.
"Ah!" said Plimsing, twinkling. "Going to marry Sir Brian Milligan at
last, I presume, sir."
"Yes," said Evelyn shortly, with a casualness which did even greater
credit to his histrionic powers than his statement of the news. For he
was astounded and ashamed by this demonstration of recondite knowledge
on the part of the detective. How came it that Plimsing had known so
much and he, Evelyn, nothing at all? He wanted to question Plimsing, but
from pride he would not. Also Plimsing had completely taken the wind out
of his sails.
"I will not detain you, sir," the detective smoothly proceeded with a
diplomatic movement towards the door. "But you will be relieved to know
that the matter of the so-called Mrs. de Rassiter is now settled. I
shall submit a formal report in due course."
"Mrs. de Rassiter?"
"The mink-fur lady, sir. She has been identified as a female who was
fined for being drunk and disorderly in Soho in the early hours of the
day before yesterday morning. I called on Messrs. Murkett and Co.,
formerly Murkett and Mostlethwaite, the solicitors who sent you that
lawyer's letter by messenger about the alleged missing fur. They had
also sent in a claim to an insurance company, as I ascertained by
enquiry, acting on a hint from my friends at the Yard. Must have got the
drink at a nightclub in Greek Street, but she probably had had a good
deal before leaving here. So I surmised from what I heard of her
behaviour before she left. A very shady firm, Murketts, sir.
Mostlethwaite's already inside, and Murkett will soon be there too if he
isn't careful."
"'Inside'?"
"Yes, sir. In prison. No one can understand why Murkett hasn't been
struck off the rolls. I insisted on seeing Mr. Murkett. I said to him, I
said: 'Perhaps you aren't aware that your client's real name is Ebag.' I
said no more. Mrs. Ebag left by the 8.20 Newhaven-Dieppe this morning,
sir. That was why I was so anxious to be there. I wanted to be quite
sure. Sorry I couldn't have her arrested, but there had been no time to
assemble my evidence. She will come back to London. They always do. They
can't keep off, no more than rooks off a cornfield. I didn't want to
tell you anything until I could tell you everything. I know how busy you
are. But as I was here.... Good morning, sir. And I hope I've not
detained you."
"Not at all, Plimsing. You've done excellently."
"Thank you, sir." Plimsing raised his left wrist again.
"Then you think the woman was a bit 'on' when she made the row in the
cloak-room."
"I should say so, sir. If she hadn't been she'd never have begun the
thing. I soon made up my mind that the coup had not been prepared. Good
morning, sir. You won't hear another word from Murketts."
Plimsing departed, with thoughts of asking for an increase of salary.
CHAPTER XXVIII
COUSIN
I
After a minute Evelyn left his castle. On the surface of his mind
floated light thoughts about the efficient and stately detective. Had he
a wife? Evelyn had learnt less about him than about any of the other
principal members of the upper-staff, Plimsing being somehow in a class
by himself. If he had a wife, did he address formal speeches to her in
the style of his speeches to Evelyn? "Having written and duly delivered
my report for the day to Mr. Cousin, Maria, I proceeded, by motor-bus,
to Victoria and caught the 6.5, in which I occupied a compartment with
three gentlemen, one of whom I knew slightly and exchanged with him a
few words about the financial situation in the City," etc. Or was he a
different kind of man at home, who fondled and tousled his fat wife, who
told him not to be a silly old fool, and upon request gave him a glass
of beer as a preliminary to supper? And was his brain aware that his
eyes were humorous and his professional deportment enough to make a cat
laugh?
Beneath the light thoughts, graver thoughts. Mystery of an immortal
soul! Evelyn was environed by mysteries. Friendly with all his
colleagues and subordinates, he _knew_ none of them, except Dennis
Dover. He was more like a man on a desert island than the vitalising
centre of a vast organisation. Something ought to be done about it. Yes,
since the encounters with Gracie Savott, and the great encounter with
her father, new perceptions had awakened in him. And beneath these
graver thoughts, a thought, one thought, one burning mass of a thought:
the thought of Fate's injustice to Miss Alice Brury. He pictured to
himself the young woman, full-bosomed, with full lips and large eyes
that belied her trained, stiff, formal demeanour and her excellent,
earnest, conscientious intentions. There were two Miss Brurys, as there
were two Mrs. O'Riordans. Of the latter he had seen both. Of the former
he had seen only one, but now he was divining the other.
From sheer devotion to duty Alice Brury had taken a very delicate social
situation out of the hands of her inferior, the cloak-room attendant.
Why should she be blamed for not guessing that her opponent was
semi-intoxicated? To distinguish between the half-drunk and the sober
was notoriously a matter of excessive difficulty; experts continually
came to quite opposite conclusions in it. Miss Brury had failed in the
affair. She had lost her head under the strain, shown signs of hysteria,
and--worst sin of all against the steely code of the hotel--raised her
voice! Then she had run away, deserted her post, in desperation and
despair. In other words, from an inhuman housekeeper she had
descended--or was it ascended?--to be a human woman. She was certainly
somebody's daughter; she might be somebody's sweetheart. Five minutes'
lack of self-control, and her career was in the way to be ruined! Cousin
had been adamantine against her readmission into the cosmos of
inhumanity. And Cousin was right. Rules were rules. He, Evelyn, could
not possibly gainsay Cousin in Cousin's own kingdom. Nevertheless the
thing was monstrous, utterly and absolutely monstrous. Evelyn uneasily
wondered how many similar affairs, less spectacular, had happened
unknown to his almightiness in the secret annals of the hotel.... And
yet, for personal reasons, he would prefer that Miss Brury should not
come back. He had discovered Miss Powler. Miss Powler was his invention,
his pet aspirant. He saw in her unlimited potentialities. If Miss Brury
came back, Miss Powler could not be admitted; and therefore the problem
at the Laundry would remain unsolved. He must talk to Cousin, and, to be
fair to Cousin, he must take heed not to have any air of authority in
the discussion.
He went downstairs, nodding absently here and there to employees of
various grades, and opened the withdrawn door over which gleamed in
light the formidable words: "Manager's Office." An alert, bright,
smiling secretary was at her desk in the ante-room, doing something with
the mouth of one of the pneumatic tubes through which repair-slips and
other notifications were despatched to subterranean dens.
"Good _morning_, Mr. Orcham." The secretarial face mystically beamed the
tidings that 'mother' was engaged to be married.
With an answering smile, but silently, Evelyn passed her and walked
straight into Cousin's private room--an apartment worthy of Cousin's
high position. A startled young man sprang up from the managerial chair
at the managerial desk, like a jack-in-the-box.
This was Monsieur Pozzi, the assistant-manager of the hotel, a
Frenchman, a protégé of Cousin's, with both continental and London
experience, and a perfect command of the English language. He had been
in the service of the Imperial Palace for about six months, but Evelyn
had had little or nothing to do with him. It was understood that he gave
plenary satisfaction to his immediate chief. Some notion of his
importance was conveyed by the fact that he had received permission to
send out his own Christmas cards to the clientèle. At that moment he was
making a rough sketch of the greeting. Not more than seven or eight of
the upper-staff had the right to distribute their personal good wishes
to the clientèle. Pozzi was more than French; he was Parisian, though
with some admixture of Italian blood. He was indeed startled by Evelyn's
abrupt and unexpected entry, but not a bit perturbed. He smiled; he
bowed gracefully; he was grace itself--slim, sinuous, elegant, correct,
charming, easy without sauciness, self-respecting without rigidity.
"Mr. Cousin will be here in one minute, sir. He's just having a word
with Ruffo."
"Oh!" said Evelyn, sitting down on the sofa. "What about? Ruffo's here
early this morning."
"Yes, sir. There was no big banquet last night. It's about some little
difficulty over extra waiters for to-night."
"I see," said Evelyn, rather drily, as one who was aware of occasional
slight frictions between Ruffo and the Restaurant-manager over the
transfer of first-night head-waiters from the restaurant to Ruffo's
department for very special banquets.
"I wonder, sir," said Pozzi, at his most attractive, standing dutifully
in front of Evelyn on the sofa, "whether I might ask you a great
favour."
"You can _ask_, my boy," Evelyn answered, with a sardonic benignity.
"It's this, sir. You probably know that a few of us, Adolphe, Dr.
Constam, Major Linklater, and myself, have a little lunch-mess of our
own in 156. Rocco has taken to golf, and we are giving him a club, or a
set of clubs. There will be a lunch. Mr. Cousin has promised to come,
and if _you_ would kindly come and preside, we should all be very
delighted. And I needn't say how flattered Rocco would be."
"But it would mean that I should have to subscribe towards the clubs."
"Oh no, sir! We shouldn't dream of such a thing. Mr. Cousin is not
subscribing."
"No," said Evelyn. "But I am. Here!" He pulled a ten-shilling note from
his waistcoat pocket.
"Really, sir?"
"Take it," Evelyn commanded.
Young Pozzi obeyed, blushing. Yes, a blush clearly visible on his olive
skin!
"You are a sport, sir," he exclaimed, almost dancing, with the
effusiveness of youth--for he was a mere thirty-one, and young at that.
"Thank you ever so much."
No formalism. No constraint. But freshness, naturalness, youthful
vivacity. Evelyn suddenly realised that he lived in a world of
constraint. Only sometimes at the daily conference, when a serious
question was on the carpet, did even the foreigners drop their subdued
formalism--among themselves, never to Evelyn nor to Cousin. The handling
of visitors, every one of whom had to be treated as a sultan, had made
hushed formalism a habit with them. Evelyn longed for oaths, wild words,
exorbitant gestures, even impudence to himself, such as he had had that
morning from the future Lady Milligan. He thought: "This boy is alive. I
am not. He is a breath of air in all the stuffiness."
"What's the date of this orgy?" he asked.
"The eighteenth, sir. Twelve forty-five. Rocco will make a special
effort with the menu."
"Write it down for me, will you?"
Pozzi jumped to the desk, wrote, and handed the slip to the panjandrum,
who crushed it into a trouser-pocket, where he could not possibly
overlook it.
"That's agreed then," said Evelyn.
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Pozzi.
II
Mr. Cousin walked in, sedate, smiling, reserved. The secretary had
warned him of Evelyn's arrival. Pozzi, bowing, walked mercurially out,
but not before snatching up his Christmas card sketch from the desk.
"Shall we have the pleasure of seeing you at the Conference this
morning?" Cousin asked, with his matchless but implacable courtesy.
"Not unless there's anything urgent."
"Nothing urgent for the Conference, but I did want to get your
instructions about Miss Brury. Mrs. O'Riordan had a long talk with me
here last night."
"Of course," said Evelyn, "the whole situation is altered now that she's
leaving."
"Leaving? Who?"
"Mrs. O'Riordan. Haven't you heard about her?"
"No," said Cousin, sitting down on the sofa by Evelyn's side. "She was
very amiable last night."
Inspirited by the discovery of at any rate one person who knew less than
himself, Evelyn communicated the news of the engagement. Naïvely he
expected signs of commotion in the manager's demeanour, but in an
instant he realised his own naïveté.
"_Tiens! Tiens!_" Cousin murmured calmly, and continued in French:
"Well, since six months I have had a little idea that something bizarre
was going on in that dear lady. She has had a little air... of
another world.... I don't know what. Indescribable. Certainly she has
temperament.... At her age! It is not natural. But what would you?
Englishwomen are always incomprehensible. A mixture so curious." He half
closed his eyes. "It is bizarre. But nothing could surprise me. For Sir
Brian Milligan--there are men to whom it is necessary that they should
complicate their lives. The excellent baronet is perhaps offering
himself in this case a complication more serious than he imagines. But
what do I know? Between ourselves, my dear director, I avow frankly that
I comprehend nothing, but nothing, of the affairs of the heart in this
city of London otherwise so sympathetic to me. That is to say, I
comprehend as an observer detached, with the brain, but I feel--nothing,
but nothing. All that says nothing to me. Madame O'Riordan has
indubitably had some luck, and I felicitate her."
Evelyn was aware of the birth of a sense of intimacy with Mr. Cousin.
Nevertheless he was somewhat dashed, in spite of himself.
"As regards her successor, what do you think of Maclaren--as a
provisional appointment?" he suggested, abruptly turning the
conversation.
"Ah! The Maclaren! Yes. That is quite another thing. She is not English.
The Maclaren--one can come to an understanding with her. Yes, yes. It is
an idea, that. Happily she is not a _femme du monde_. Madame O'Riordan
has lately had a rage for _femmes du monde_. True, she is one of them
herself. But I do not share her views in the matter. To me it is
unnatural that a _femme du monde_ should hold a servile situation. It is
against nature. It demands that she should play a rôle. Artificial. She
must think more about her rôle than about her work. Perhaps among the
numerous Russian princesses that one sees now in Paris there are a few
capable of persuading themselves to be born again into a state of
servitude. But Russians are Russians. An Englishwoman can never be born
again. It is the aristocratic race, above all. Madame O'Riordan brought
to me a candidate for the position of the poor Brury. Very _femme du
monde_. Oh, very! Niece of a knight who blew his brains out. I did not
encourage her."
"I agree with you," said Evelyn warmly, changing all his views on the
subject in a moment. Not with his brain, but with his heart.
He saw daylight. Everything would be easy. Cousin would begin with a
prejudice favourable to Violet Powler because she was not a gentlewoman.
There could be no friction. He at once told Cousin about Miss Powler,
emphasising her origin, about the delicate position at the Laundry, and
about his plans for making an exchange between Miss Brury and Miss
Powler. Cousin nodded several times.
"I am glad," said Cousin, in English, "that you support me against this
extraordinary proposal for taking Miss Brury back again. It must happen
sometimes that someone must suffer. And Miss Brury has been unfortunate.
But to take her back would be impossible unless we are to ignore the
interests of the hotel. And your ingenious suggestion would solve the
problem. Of course I accept it, without reserve. If you are
satisfied----"
"You had better have a look at Miss Powler for yourself."
"Of course. If you wish it. But I am sure----"
"I will send for her."
Cousin then seemed to resume his habitual mood of taciturnity, after the
astonishing exhibition of communicativeness.
Evelyn hurried away to his office and to Miss Cass. He was uplifted
anew, but differently now. He felt that he was somehow climbing out of
his groove. Dangerous to put an inexperienced woman into a post so
important as that relinquished under stress of emotion by Miss Brury.
But danger now attracted him. And Violet Powler had all the talents. She
would succeed. Miss Brury would be saved. Miss Maclaren was acceptable
to the Frenchman. Mrs. O'Riordan could not interfere. All things were
working together for good. Of course he must see Cyril Purkin and
explain. Everything must be done quickly, instantly. Miss Cass had a
busy time telephoning to the Laundry-manager to come at one hour, and to
Miss Powler to come at another, and telegraphing to Miss Brury to come
at still another hour. She reported that all was in order, and that she
had so reported to Mr. Cousin. The new heaven and the new earth were in
train.
CHAPTER XXIX
VIOLET'S ARRIVAL
I
Another lamp was burning in another brain, Violet Powler's: which with
Evelyn's lamp in Evelyn's brain, made two. Violet, all unconscious of
what she was doing, had brought her bright but materially invisible lamp
into the hotel one morning at five minutes to ten. According to
instructions she reported at Mr. Cousin's office. But she saw only the
manager's secretary, Mr. Cousin being engaged at a conference. The
secretary, name unknown, was an agreeable and vivacious young woman. She
shook hands with Violet, seemed to know all about her, and sharply
ordered a page-boy, who had come with a cablegram, to escort Violet to
her quarters on the eighth-floor. Violet, she explained, was first to
install herself and then to report for orders to Mrs. O'Riordan, also an
inhabitant of the eighth-floor.
Violet, despite her commonsense, thought that the secretarial demeanour
was somewhat casual, having regard to the importance (for Violet) of the
occasion. Surely the arrival of a new floor-housekeeper could not be a
daily event in the life even of a great hotel!
The secretary, on the other hand, thought that Violet's demeanour was
astoundingly casual, though cordial enough, having regard to the
importance of the occasion. Surely it could not be a daily event in any
girl's life to walk out of a South London laundry straight to a fine
situation in the greatest hotel on earth! But the secretary could not
see Violet's lamp.
Violet and the tiny page-boy went up in the lift; the liftman was very
respectful to Violet; the page-boy found her room and having opened the
door made as if to leave.
"One moment," said she. "Which is Mrs. O'Riordan's room?"
The page-boy gave the indication and pointed a white-gloved hand.
"And what's _your_ name?" she asked.
"John Croom, miss." And he added, grinning, "Jack."
She smiled, patted his shoulder; he left; and Violet shut and bolted the
door of her new home.
It was a smallish room, looking on a courtyard. And the courtyard was a
deep well (of which Violet could not see the bottom) whose sides were
white tiles inset with tiers of windows. Still, the room was larger than
the one she had that morning quitted in her father's little house in
Battersea, and it was more elegantly furnished: a sort of
bed-sitting-room, with a sofa and a desk and a business-like nest of
drawers in the sitting portion of it.
Her simple and recently fretful and pessimistic mother would have deemed
it a magnificent apartment. Mrs. Powler had cried at parting, and amid
her tears had deplored Violet's facial make-up and expressed the hope
that Violet would not be allotted to an attic whose only window was a
skylight. Her father, having a rendezvous in Vauxhall, had accompanied
Violet a certain distance in a tram. They had said good-bye in the tram,
and shabby passengers in the huge squalid vehicle had beheld with
inquisitive wonder the kissing of the shabby old man by the rouged and
powdered young lady whose smartness cast doubt upon her virtue. But when
moisture showed in Violet's eyes the judgment of the passengers was
softened and Violet received the benefit of the doubt.
Now she dropped her bag and her gloves and her hat and her thin cloak on
the bed. Her luggage had been despatched in advance by the simple device
of sticking a card bearing famous initials in the protruding square
window of the front room in Renshaw Street. Because she apprehended that
the luggage might be delayed, Violet had decided to leave home in what
she informed a suspicious mother was to be her working dress and face.
But the luggage had reached its destination. It lay in a pile at the
foot of the bed.
First she examined critically the interior of the wardrobe, giving it
ninety marks out of a possible hundred. Then she examined herself
critically in the wardrobe mirror, and gave herself ninety marks out of
a hundred. Yes, she would pass. Brown hair, permanently waved.
Finger-nails curved in a crescent. Black dress bought ready made at a
mighty store in Clapham and altered to fit by Violet herself. Quite
stylish. A thin girdle (for keys). New shoes; new stockings. As for her
make-up, it made her feel as if she was in the wings waiting to "go on"
in Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera--except that the skin under the eyes
had not been darkened. She hoped, she was convinced, that her face would
successfully stand the scrutiny of seven floor-housekeepers and a
head-housekeeper. She was hardly at ease, yet, in her new face; but at
any rate it had so far provoked no slightest sign of astonishment or
dismay on the faces of the members of the hotel staff. She unfastened
the bag and retouched her features here and there. Then she examined the
room more closely. Well, it was good in her sight. Wash-basin, h. and c.
She turned a tap. The h. was tremendously hot. She sat on the bed,
springing up and down. Soft. On the desk was quite a large vase of fresh
flowers.
Instantly, as she patted the flowers, the Imperial Palace rose in her
esteem to the full height of its reputation. Somebody with imagination
had thought of those flowers and of their effect on the arriving,
intimidated stranger. Vast as the organisation was, it had not been too
vast to think of a trifle of flowers for her comfort. She said to
herself that she would be happy in the Imperial Palace.
She had an impulse to unpack her possessions. No! That would not be
right. Her duty was to report for duty at once. At the Laundry she would
already have done two hours' work. Still, she dawdled hesitant about the
room. She would hardly admit to herself that she was afraid, positively
afraid, to go forth into the corridor. But she was. The corridor was the
corridor to the new life. She went forth into the corridor, and as she
did so the lamp in her head suddenly burned with a brighter flame. From
the end of the corridor, where her room was, she saw the apparently
endless vista of a kingdom. She saw herself the vicereine of the
kingdom. And in five seconds she was seeing herself as the
head-housekeeper of the Imperial Palace Hotel. Why not? There would be
no Cyril Purkin in the Imperial Palace to disquiet and harass her.
Nevertheless she felt really frightened. It seemed impossible to her
that she, she, straight out of a laundry, could manage a floor of the
Imperial Palace. Pooh! Why not? The job might well be easier than that
of managing a couple of hundred or more girls all in one way or another
temperamental. And she firmly believed in herself: which fact did
nothing to mitigate her fright--stage-fright.
She walked steadily down the deserted corridor, passing number after
number until she reached Mrs. O'Riordan's room (unnumbered). The door
was ajar. She knocked. No answer. Cautiously she stepped in.
The spectacle of the sitting-room made a most sinister impression upon
Violet. The walls were bare. A large number of nails, and a large number
of small rectangular patches, showed where pictures had been. The
mantelpiece was empty. There were no cushions and no knick-knacks
anywhere. There was the carpet, the rather plentiful furniture, and
nothing else, not even a book. Feeling like a trespasser, she passed
into the bedroom, the door to which was wide open. Similar phenomena.
The bed had been slept in, but she could see no nightgown nor slippers.
The interior of the large wardrobe was exposed, and quite empty. Three
trunks of various sorts and sizes, and a wooden packing-case and a
shapeless bundle, encumbered the floor. They were labelled: "Mrs.
O'Riordan. Cloak-room, Euston Station." The melancholy of an abandoned
home, of a semi-spiritual death, of something that was and is not,
pervaded the rooms deprived of their individuality.
Mrs. O'Riordan had gone, and she would not return. Violet had been told
that the head-housekeeper would remain for at least another week, during
which she was personally to instruct the newcomer in her work. At the
beginning of the negotiations for Violet's entry into the Imperial
Palace, she had understood that a period of six months, soon afterwards
diminished to three months, would be necessary for proper tuition in her
duties. Then it had been intimated to her that a young woman with
experience such as hers would easily learn the duties in a week of
intensive training under Mrs. O'Riordan herself. She had successfully
survived the ordeals of a personal catechism by Mrs. O'Riordan and
another by Mr. Cousin. Salary and conditions of notice had been
arranged, and the contract signed. Everything had marched smoothly
according to plan. And now--this! She returned to the sitting-room and
sat down on the sofa, uneasy, desolated. Then, as there was a bell
handy, she rang it. A plump chambermaid, in early middle-age, appeared.
II
"Good morning."
"Good morning, miss." The chambermaid's attitude, while reserved, was
not at all unfriendly. The woman had a fat, good-natured face. Her blue
print morning dress showed a stain, and one shoulder-strap of the apron
was twisted.
"Do you look after this room--these rooms?"
"Yes, miss."
"I'm the new floor-housekeeper. My name's Powler, Violet Powler. Will
you tell me what yours is?"
"Beatrice, miss."
"Beatrice what?"
"Mrs. Beatrice Noakes."
"Been here long?"
"Oh yes, miss. Ever since me poor husband died, 1917."
"In the war?" Beatrice nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that--I mean about
your husband."
"Yes, miss," Beatrice said casually. The fact was that her husband had
long ceased to have any reality in her memory. Not even his shade
haunted it.
"Any children, Mrs. Noakes?"
"Oh _no_, miss. If I had I shouldn't be here, should I, seeing we sleep
in. I've worked on every floor of this hotel, miss," she went on more
vivaciously. "Same as Miss Maclaren. Miss Maclaren used to take me with
her whenever she moved."
"Well that shows she trusted you."
"Yes, miss. My word! And now she's going to be head-housekeeper----"
"Yes, yes. And you'll still be on this floor."
"Yes, miss."
"I think we shall get on."
"You and Miss Maclaren, miss?"
"Miss Maclaren of course. But I meant you and me. I'm sure you'll be
able to tell me all sorts of things I've got to know."
"Well, miss, I always like to help--when I'm asked. I never put myself
forward, if you know what I mean. But when I'm asked, I'm _there_."
Beatrice smiled helpfully.
"Do you know where Miss Maclaren is?"
"No, miss. She ain't been up here this morning."
"Is Mrs. O'Riordan coming back?"
"That I couldn't say, miss," said Beatrice, caution in her voice.
"You've seen her this morning?"
"Mrs. O'Riordan? Oh yes, miss."
"She didn't say?"
"No, miss." Still caution.
"Has she asked you to her wedding?"
"Well, miss, no. But I do believe she would have done--just to the
church. Just to come in and see her go off like. But it's a great
secret, I hear. Nobody knows anything. They want a _quiet_ wedding. I
hope it won't be at a Registry Office. But it won't. Because Mrs.
O'Riordan's a Roman Catholic. Every Sunday morning she went to Mass, as
they call it."
"I see her luggage is all packed."
"Yes, miss. Some of it's gone. And I did hear the rest is being sent for
to-day some time. You could have knocked me down with a feather when she
told me this morning when I brought her tea she had to leave at once.
How she packed them trunks between last night and to-day _I_ don't know.
I'm quite free to tell you, miss. She only said to me I wasn't to say a
word till she'd gone. Well, as she has gone--well, I didn't say a word."
"Everyone seems to trust you, Beatrice." Beatrice smiled happily. "I'm
very much obliged." Violet rose from the sofa.
"Anything I _can_ do, miss----"
"Thank you, Beatrice."
The room was less desolate, its melancholy diminished.
As soon as Beatrice had shut the door, Violet took up the telephone and,
composing her voice, asked to be put on to Mr. Cousin's secretary. She
heard an answering enquiry within ten seconds, and said:
"I thought I ought to report that Mrs. O'Riordan had left before I got
up here. Violet Powler speaking, in Mrs. O'Riordan's room. She's gone
away."
"Gone?" Serious astonishment in her tone. "But she can't have _gone_.
She must have just gone out for something. She'll be back again soon."
"I don't think so," said Violet, and described in detail the state of
Mrs. O'Riordan's late home. She finished: "There's nobody up here for me
to refer to. Miss Maclaren isn't anywhere about. Will you please tell
Mr. Cousin?"
"It's all frightfully queer," said the thin secretarial voice. "I can't
disturb Mr. Cousin just now. Listen. If you'll wait where you are I'll
give you a ring in a minute or two." A note of sympathetic intimacy in
the voice.
"Thanks very much. I say. Do you mind telling me your name? I shan't
feel so strange when I've got to know a few names."
An amiable comprehending laugh in the telephone.
"Yes, of course. Tilton." The voice spelt the name. "Christian name same
as yours."
"What? Violet? Really!" Violet's tone seemed to indicate a pleased
surprise that there should be another Violet in the whole world.
"No!" The voice laughed. "I knew I should catch you, Miss Powler.
Marian."
And Violet laughed saying: "How nice!" Violet's full name was Violet
Marian Powler. Miss Marian Tilton had seen it in the formal contract.
"When you have a moment, come down here and see me. Any time. And I'll
show you the upper-staff file and go over some of the names with you. Au
revoir, Miss Powler."
Violet thought that she might be making a friend. Already she was
beginning to relish her social environment. But with caution. At their
previous brief encounters she had suspected that the second Marian might
conceivably be a little too dashing and worldly for her personal taste.
Still, she felt capable of being dashing and worldly too, if necessary.
She was absorbing, as through the pores of her skin, the atoms of the
Imperial Palace atmosphere. Every moment she learnt something, and every
moment she grew more at ease. Marian Tilton. Beatrice Noakes. Beings
that belonged to two different orders; but both friendly and both ready
to be helpful and to assume that she, Violet, was all right. And there
was no more Cyril Purkin, who couldn't keep away from her and couldn't
bear her. Intense relief in that thought! Cyril's one kiss had cured her
of him for ever and ever; though it had been a kiss sober and respectful
enough.
The mysterious vanishing of Mrs. O'Riordan was shaping into a
first-class sensation. And she was the discoverer of the vanishing. And
what of it? Mrs. O'Riordan was leaving, anyhow. Well, she had left. And
Violet was glad that she had left. Why? Because there must be something
rather queer about a lady who in such a high position could play such a
trick in such a place as the Imperial Palace. Mrs. O'Riordan gone, they
could all as it were make a fresh start on a clean page. And further,
Mrs. O'Riordan's flight seemed somehow to humanise the formidable,
frightening, inhuman organism of the Imperial Palace. Funny, human
things happened there, as they happened in laundries. One touch of
nature... etc. Trite! But how true!
She glanced round the room. And the room had now almost entirely lost
its melancholy of a home deserted by a mistress whom it would never see
again. She wondered what Miss Maclaren would make of it, and what Miss
Maclaren was like; for she had not yet met Miss Maclaren. The tinkle of
the telephone-bell gave her a shock.
"That Miss Powler? Miss Cass speaking." A voice drier than that of
Marian. Voice of one higher than Marian Tilton in the company of
cherubim and seraphim. "Mr. Orcham says please will you come down and
see him immediately." Authority in the voice.
So Marian had telephoned to Miss Cass. And Miss Cass had imparted the
strange news to her master, and her master had deemed it stupendous
enough to justify him in sending for Violet to come to him immediately!
"Thank you, Miss Cass. I'll come at once."
And now, as she quitted the room, Violet was really all in a flutter.
She had not seen Mr. Orcham since the interview at which he had so oddly
hinted about rouge and powder. She remembered her blush at that
interview. She felt as though she would never forget it. Everything had
moved very harmoniously, step by step, since the interview. Cyril Purkin
had quietly and urbanely told her that Mr. Orcham wanted her at the
Palace, and that therefore he, Mr. Purkin, could of course offer no
objection to her leaving the Laundry. For one week she had given
instruction in the management of laundry-girls to her successor, Miss
Brury, who had begun with condescension and ended with gratitude almost
meek. And no sign from Mr. Orcham. But she surmised, felt, knew, was
absolutely sure, that the unseen hand of Mr. Orcham had guided events.
And now she had arrived in her new situation, and within half an hour
the great invisible Mr. Orcham had summoned her, because of her
astounding discovery! A very different place, this, from the homely
Laundry!
She walked along the corridor and saw the lift. Ought she, now a member
of the staff, to dare to use the lift? Or was there a staff-lift? She
had heard of such things. Yes, she chided herself for being all in a
flutter. She rang the lift-bell and waited, and up came the lift out of
immeasurable depth, as promptly as though she were the Marchioness of
Renshaw and staying in the hotel. The bony-faced, sallow liftman gave
her a decorous smile of recognition as he slid back the grille. He knew
who she was and what she was.
"Ground-floor, please."
"Yes, miss," the man compliantly answered, feeling in his heart, so
acutely sensitised to the varying influences of individualities, that
here was a polite, self-possessed, firm young lady who would certainly
stand no kind of familiarity.
CHAPTER XXX
OFFICIAL INTERVIEW
I
"Good morning, Miss Powler. Welcome to the Imperial Palace."
This was Evelyn's greeting to Violet when she entered Evelyn's outer
office, where apparently he was just finishing a conversation with the
authoritative Miss Cass, who sat at her desk and beheld the incomer with
a firm impartial glance. He offered his hand, not to a
floor-housekeeper, but merely to a new and possibly nervous member of
the great Palace commonwealth of which he was president.
"Good morning, sir. Thank you, I'm sure. You sent for me, sir." Violet
had expected to be nervous, but she was nervous beyond her fears; so
much so that quite involuntarily she averted her face as she shook
hands. "Good morning, Miss Cass," she murmured, as quite involuntarily
she caught Miss Cass's glance.
"Good morning, Miss Powler," Miss Cass responded, in a strong, almost
peremptory voice, but nevertheless with a cheerful and not unfriendly
smile, and bent at once over her desk, as one who had in train mighty
matters which must not suffer delay. Violet had encountered Miss Cass
only once before.
"Come in, will you?" said Evelyn, and when they were in his room and the
door shut, and he was pulling a cigarette out of his case, he said
curtly: "Sit down," and smiled at her.
Curious that she should feel more diffident now than at any of their
previous meetings. She was ashamed of herself. Evelyn, his back turned
to Violet for a moment, dropped a match into an ash-tray on his desk and
puffed smoke, as it were meditatively. By all his movements Violet
realised afresh and more clearly that he was a gentleman. So different
from Cyril Purkin, whose every gesture and tone demonstrated
continuously a total lack of distinction. And she thought: "And I'm not
a lady, either, and could I ever be?" Distinction could not be acquired.
"Funny about Mrs. O'Riordan," he said, suddenly facing Violet, and
laughing easily. "You don't know the explanation, but I do. And I may as
well tell you. We were going to give her a staff-dinner to-morrow night.
She always said she could never go through with a dinner and hear her
health proposed, and wedded happiness--you know she's going to be
married. I didn't believe her, and I insisted on the dinner. Well, I was
wrong. She left a note for me this morning. Here it is." He touched a
letter which lay on the desk. "She's run away from the dinner. That's
all. I'm sorry. But these brides----! It doesn't matter of course in the
least, dinner or no dinner. Still, I'm sorry. Miss Maclaren gets her
job--Mrs. O'Riordan's, and she'll take over at once, anyhow this
afternoon. I've telephoned her and I've told her something about you,
and I think you'll like her. And of course she'll be on your floor.
You'll pick up your work in a couple of days. Miss Brury was doing
ground-floor when she left us, but Mr. Cousin is starting you on
Eighth--easier for you to learn there. But of course we do move our
housekeepers up and down. You'll know how to handle customers--I think I
told you--and you know all about linen and how to deal with maids. It's
all much simpler than it sounds. Some sense is all that's required. You
trust yourself to Miss Maclaren, and if she isn't about, just act on
your own. You're bound to be all right. Only don't worry Mr. Cousin.
Ever heard of the chain of responsibility? Well, we're all links in the
chain. Miss Maclaren is the next link above you, and Mr. Cousin's above
her, and I'm above Mr. Cousin, and the Board's above me. But remember,
you can't skip links. Mr. Cousin can go to the Board only through me,
and you can go to Mr. Cousin only through Miss Maclaren. It's a
necessary arrangement in a big place like this. Is that clear?"
"Quite, sir."
"How do you feel--on your first morning?"
"Well, sir, I'm rather nervous."
"You don't look it a bit, and so long as you don't look it, it doesn't
matter. In fact it's rather a good thing to be nervous."
Violet thought that there was wisdom in this last remark. But otherwise
she was somewhat critical of the panjandrum. He seemed to her to be
taking things very lightly. How could she learn her job--the job of
housekeeping for an entire floor of the immense Imperial Palace--in a
couple of days? The notion was frivolous. (And yet simultaneously, as
she criticised, she had a conviction that she indeed could learn the job
in a couple of days. All housekeeping was in essence alike. And of
luxurious housekeeping she had had some experience at Sir Henry
Savott's, where the figures of the housekeeping-books had so startled
her in the first week that she could never forget them.)
The panjandrum seemed, too, to assume that his domestic machine worked
and would work by itself. He probably knew nothing about the detail of
housekeeping. In fine, he was a man, and a man inclined to be
prematurely airy and gay. Perhaps superficial! Her nervousness did not
in the least hamper her strongly developed critical faculty, which
faculty however she always hid away from view, like a possession
semi-sacred, occult, too precious for any exposure to the public gaze.
Few of her equals or her superiors had even guessed the existence of
that sharp, acid faculty.
II
"Is there anything you want to ask me?" Evelyn suggested.
Violet reflected. "No, sir.... No, sir. I only hope I--er--my dress
and so on--I hope it will do." She looked younger, girlish, confused,
quite charming in her sudden constraint. There was a hardly perceptible
change of bodily pose, nothing more than the disclosure of an impulse
towards a change of pose, to the end that he might see her more
completely.... It was naught. Evelyn glanced at her anew.
"I'll tell you more about that when you stand up," he said.
She faintly smiled, dropped her eyes, maidenly, modest; hating herself
for her attitude, her feelings. Staff-manageress of a laundry,
floor-housekeeper in a large fashionable hotel--and lacked the wit not
to be girlish and silly! She scorned herself ferociously. Where was her
self-reliance, to say nothing of her self-esteem? Weak as water: that
was what she was. She would have given a lot to be back at the Laundry,
nicely firm with the girls there, nicely untouchable to Mr. Purkin.
"I hope you'll succeed here," Evelyn went on. "Because I'm responsible
for your coming here. I think you will succeed. I'm sure you will. Not
my business to engage floor-housekeepers, you know. I never interfere.
But when I was down at the Laundry that day, you remember, we were
rather in a quandary, and it occurred to me you might be the very person
we needed. Yes, and I think you are."
"I shall try to be, sir," she answered conventionally, uncertainly,
searing herself with invisible, inaudible criticism.... He must be
taking her for a ninny. How could he take her for the same girl who had
favourably impressed him at the Laundry? He couldn't.
Evelyn said:
"There's a woman up on your floor who might be rather useful to you if
you get on the right side of her. Bertha--Bertha something. Noakes, is
it? I'll find out. Quite a friend of mine. Used to be on my floor. We
shift her about whenever we're in difficulties. She's up there now
because Mrs. O'Riordan was doing head-housekeeper and floor-housekeeper
as well; and not in the best health either."
"Do you mean Beatrice Noakes, sir?"
"Beatrice. Beatrice. Of course. I simply can't remember names. So you've
come across her already?"
Violet related the Beatrice episode, and in doing so scraped together
some self-confidence.
"I can see that Heaven is watching over you," said Evelyn. "_You_ won't
let me down."
"Let you down, sir?"
"Nothing, nothing. Mrs. O'Riordan told me she wouldn't leave me in the
lurch. Only she did. However, all things work together for good."
"It's absolutely certain that I shan't leave you in the lurch, sir,"
said a new Violet Powler.
"No, you won't. I say, I should be glad if you'd just see this afternoon
to Miss Maclaren being fixed up nice and cosy in her rooms. She'll never
do it for herself, anyhow until there's nothing else wants doing
anywhere on the floor. And she'll object to you bothering about it. Say
it's an instruction from me. That'll settle it. Have some flowers put in
the room, in both rooms."
"Yes, sir," said Violet eagerly, warmly.
A pause. Violet stood up.
"Yes," said Evelyn, examining her appearance as though she was a
mannequin. "I should think you'd do very well. But ask Miss Maclaren. I
shall be surprised if, before you're much older, one of 'em doesn't ask
you what lipstick you use." He was sardonic, teasing.
"Thank you, sir." Violet moved to leave him.
"Here. One moment." He stopped her. "I have to go down into the
engine-room. You'd better come with me. You ought to see the _real_ part
of the place. Besides, it makes conversation with customers. It's an
idea I had only yesterday. For the floor-housekeepers. What can they
know of floors who only the floors know? There's a great deal more in
this hotel than meets the eye. And it ought to meet the eye of important
young women like you."
CHAPTER XXXI
BOWELS OF THE HOTEL
I
Violet went down with Evelyn into the unknown, first through a door to a
staircase of bare stone, then along a narrow corridor, then down a slope
which was ridged to prevent slipping, then by turns and twists until she
had quite lost the sense of direction. The two walked side by side when
space permitted; sometimes Evelyn without hesitation stepped in front of
her, sometimes he pressed himself against a wall courteously to let her
precede him as a woman should precede a man. Once or twice a graceless
menial employee passed them unrecognised and unrecognising.
They were in the Imperial Palace, but it was another Imperial Palace: no
bright paint, no gilt, no decorations, no attempt to please the eye,
little or no daylight, electric lamps but no lampshades; another world
in which appearances had no importance and were indeed neglected.
She glimpsed a large open space, a room lacking a fourth wall, in which
a number of girls in overalls were bending over big wicker-baskets of
soiled linen, separating, transferring, sorting. In the semi-obscurity
they had something of an air of dimly-tinted phantoms; they were
absorbed; they did not look up or away. The spectacle vaguely recalled
the Laundry; but the Laundry had no basement; everything was light in
the Laundry. Here she had the sensation of being underground, though in
fact she was hardly yet underground. Of course she had a feeling for the
romantic; the word itself, however, was hardly in her vocabulary--at any
rate for use.
She was still rather awed by the strangeness of her sudden magic removal
from the environment of the lowly, commonplace Laundry to the enormous
and majestic environment of the Imperial Palace. Here she was, walking
with the supreme ruler of the bewildering hotel, almost as an equal--did
he not make way for her?--the man who was above everybody, the man who
could say even to Mr. Cousin "Come," and he would come. Hardly credible!
And the change had arisen out of the supreme ruler happening to overhear
her talking to a colour-blind girl! She was awed, yes, but she was
proud.
"I can't be _quite_ ordinary," she thought, with that false humility
which people assume even to themselves. For she knew very well that she
was far from ordinary. She had a fairly accurate idea of her unusual
worth, being as free from conceit as from any form of inferiority
complex.
"Here!" said Evelyn, stopping. "We may as well look in here." She saw,
painted in black on a brownish yellow wall the words, "Audit Department.
Mr. Exshaw," and a pointing arrow. They entered a very large low room
divided by glass partitions into various enclosures, with a long passage
and doors into each enclosure. Numbers of male clerks at desks strewn
with prodigious account-books. All the clerks absorbed, bent, like the
linen-girls.
"Mr. Exshaw in?" Evelyn called out loud.
"Yes, sir," said someone.
They walked to the end of the corridor. Violet thought that she would
have been frightened to death to venture alone into this new world. She
needed protection. And she had it, the mightiest possible protection.
She was as safe as a child in its cot. A transient, pleasant surmise:
was it Mr. Orcham who had ordered flowers for her bedroom? Absurd. And
yet--had he not told her to put flowers in Miss Maclaren's rooms? He
might--he just might have.
Evelyn strode into the final enclosure--more spacious than the others. A
big, high desk, at which stood a short, spectacled, grey-haired man, a
pen behind his ear, the biggest account-book she had ever seen in front
of him, minutely ruled horizontally and vertically.
"Morning, Exshaw."
The man seemed to wake out of a trance (pretence, thought Violet
critically), and as he gazed at the visitors his eyes hardened.
"Ah! Good morning, Mr. Orcham." It was as if the man had said: "On
careful inspection I realise that you are a gentleman named Orcham and
my chief."
"Got a moment?"
"As many as you wish, sir." With a dignity that threw doubt on the
statement.
"This is Miss Powler, one of our housekeepers," said Evelyn lightly.
Violet bowed. Mr. Exshaw gave a start, then curtly nodded.
"I've come to the conclusion that it will be a good thing for the
floor-housekeepers to get some kind of a notion of the more or less
secret _works_ of this place." Evelyn went on. "Miss Powler is the first
to come. You may expect a few more visits. Don't you think it's rather a
scheme? Widen their horizons, eh?" Evelyn laughed; more correctly, he
sniggered.
"Well, sir," Mr. Exshaw answered, having judicially pondered, "we do
think now and then that if the Floors knew about the way we straighten
things out for them down here it might be good for their souls. Which
floor?" he demanded of Violet.
"Eighth," said Violet, low.
Mr. Exshaw peered at her through his spectacles, apparently saying to
himself: "So this specimen is a floor-housekeeper. Interesting to see.
What next I wonder!" And the Floors seemed to be a very long way
off--phenomena heard of, written about, checked, reprimanded, but
invisible and materially non-existent.
"Ah! Eighth!" said Mr. Exshaw at length, aloud. "Eighth is a wonderful
floor for breakages. There must be somebody up there who plays hockey
with tumblers. Breakages in the restaurant cost us a hundred pounds a
week, but the percentage on Eighth I should say is higher. I don't mean
they cost the hotel a hundred a week, because we only pay a quarter, but
the waste's there. You got that special memo day before yesterday,
Miss--er?"
"This is Miss Powler's first day here," Evelyn put in, before Violet
could speak.
"Ah!" said Mr. Exshaw, more benevolently, for he was a just man. He
rapped on the glass behind him, and a youth rushed in. "Bring me N
here," said Mr. Exshaw to the youth.
N proved to be a heavy, red-bound book of account.
"You might like to see, Miss--er. Restaurant. Grill." He turned pages
over. "Floors. First. Sixth. Eighth, yes. Here you are. Here's the
analysis of breakages on Eighth, week by week. Here's last week."
Violet obediently looked, but she could see nothing save a dance of
numerals. She had a ridiculous sense of shame on behalf of the
eighth-floor. Her wandering gaze saw that the window offered a fine view
of a white-tiled blank wall about six feet off, and that Mr. Exshaw's
spectacles were steel-rimmed.
"Yes," said the ninny in her. Yet she was not unused to vast statistical
volumes at the Laundry, nor to male clerks bending over the same. But at
the Imperial Palace the scale of things was more grandiose.
"You'd be very clever if you grasped all this in a month of Sundays,
Miss--er," said Mr. Exshaw kindly.
She thought he was perhaps a nice man, if a trifle self-important in the
presence of the panjandrum whom he ignored. The next minute he shut the
book with a slam.
"I suppose she can see everything, sir?" he surprisingly addressed the
panjandrum.
"Certainly," said Evelyn, "so far as I'm concerned. It's up to you."
"She might like to see how the floor order-slips are analysed."
"Oh, I should!" said the ninny.
Thereafter, as the accountancy mechanism not only of order-slips, but
bills, of estimates (estimate of £41,000 for next year's linen
renewals), wages (Mr. Exshaw skimmed rapidly over the wages),
staff-meals, graphs, and forty other categories, passed before her,
Violet felt herself in a daze, a maze and a nightmare. And she marvelled
at the brain of Mr. Exshaw, head-demon of the unparalleled cave.
"I think you can't carry any more, young lady," he said triumphantly.
Violet, weak, smiled. "Thank you very much, Mr. Exshaw," she said,
beholden.
"Not at all," said Mr. Exshaw brightly.
Violet and her protector were hardly out of the room before Mr. Exshaw
resumed the huge book on which he was engaged when they had disturbed
him. Evelyn stuck his head back into the enclosure.
"Mrs. O'Riordan has left us," said he, delivering a tit-bit of hotel
news.
"So I hear, sir," said Mr. Exshaw casually, without looking up.
When they were safely out of the cave Violet said:
"It is wonderful. I should call it exciting."
"It is, isn't it?" said Evelyn.
She thought he liked her nervous animation. He glanced at her quite
appreciatively, humanly. Very different from Cyril Purkin! She felt
happy, if agitated.
"I'd no idea----" she softly exclaimed.
"No, you hadn't," he said, quite ruthlessly. "But you'll soon be getting
an idea. That's what you're down here for.... Exshaw was in this
place before I came on the scene. Nobody in the hotel knows his job
better."
Some hardness in his voice. One moment he was smiling at her
appreciatively; the next moment his tone seemed to be warning her: "We
may as well look the fact in the face--you are an ignorant simpleton
here. You'll learn, but you don't realise how much you have to learn,
and I don't expect you to realise it."
Where now was the admired shepherdess of laundry-hoydens; and where the
composed, quietly imperative daughter of Renshaw Street from whom two
parents drew solace, harmony and moral strength? Still, Mr. Orcham was
protecting her. There was more beneath his lightness than she had
imagined. And yet had she not always, since the career-turning
interview, divined everything of force that there was beneath his
lightness? She said to herself that she would not mind being admonished,
corrected by him, because he was a just man. She could look up to him.
She could never have looked up to Cyril Purkin, though she admitted
Cyril's excellence--his conscientiousness, his devotion to duty, his
industry, his clear head. If she had married Cyril, what a secret
disaster! A narrow man. Never laughed, or, if he did, always at
something silly. He exhibited more self-confidence than he felt. Married
to her, he would have appeared to rule her, whereas in reality she would
have ruled him, and they would both have known it, and Cyril would have
resented it as though the fault was hers, and she would always have had
the sensation of not being supported. For many years at home she had
been the supporter, and she desired relief. With Cyril she would have
had no relief.
Now Mr. Orcham, on the contrary, exhibited less self-confidence than he
felt. In thought she was beginning to make a hero of Mr. Orcham. She
needed a hero, had never had one. Probably she would not run across him
once a month, if at all. But that would not interfere with the gradual
process of hero-creation. His image would be set within her brain in the
full light of the lamp of passionate ardour, assiduity and endeavour
which burned there.
II
"Might look in at the printing-shop," Evelyn suggested as they resumed
the pilgrimage together. It was close by. More males, but of the artisan
type, not the clerkly. All absorbed. Several machines, worked by hand.
Piles of cards and sheets. Evelyn took off a card as it emerged from a
machine.
"Breakfast menu for the Grill to-morrow morning. For the Floors too."
"Oh yes," Violet said. She could think of nothing else to say. She was
tremendously anxious to seem intelligent. But how could she seem
intelligent?
"Here's a notice to the floor-waiters," said Evelyn, picking up a sheet
from a small pile. "It will be stuck on the walls of the service-rooms
to-night. Isn't striking enough, perhaps."
Only one old man, a compositor setting up a special programme for a
banquet, saluted Evelyn, who spoke to nobody. Violet surprised one or
two male glances at herself. She would have preferred that Mr. Orcham
should explain her in the printing-shop as he had done in the
audit-office. But Mr. Orcham didn't. They left the printing-shop.
"Does the hotel do all its own printing?" Violet questioned.
"Rather!" said Evelyn. "And it manufactures its own beds; and its own
silversmiths repair its own silver and electroplate and so on. Here!
You'd better just glance at the Stocks department."
Much of the Stocks department had no daylight, but the darker chambers
were illuminated, irradiated, by the energy of the enthusiasm and
loquacity of the manager, Mr. Stairforth, to whom Evelyn carefully
presented his eighth-floor housekeeper. Mr. Stairforth, like Mr. Exshaw,
was grey in the service of the Palace. Withal he had remained a boy. So
intense was his pride in Stocks that he delighted to receive callers.
And he delighted to send subordinates to and fro to fetch things for the
practical illustration of his remarks to callers. He talked incessantly,
and with extreme clarity and rapidity. He could not stand still. He
could not refrain from imparting knowledge. He was eager with Violet,
seeing in her a virgin subject. He drew the pair urgently from room to
room, pouring out statistics in a quenchless stream. He never hesitated
for a figure.
"Here's the stationery. £3,250's worth. Specially made paper. Our own
water mark. Look! Here's a time-sheet." He held it up against an
electric lamp. "See? Time-sheets are the most indispensable things in
the hotel. Every five minutes has to be accounted for here. Now fancy
goods. We give away twenty thousand fans a year. That's only one item.
So on and so on. Now the glass."
He was leading them into a huge and horrid cavern. He administered to
Violet colossal figures about glass. Also he explained in detail how
glass was transported. Cocktail glasses. Yes. Cocktails were the most
profitable trade in the hotel. Mr. Orcham would agree. Nineteen bars in
the hotel, but of course mainly service-bars. Still, bars. Mr.
Stairforth knew everything, everything. He had a million compartments in
his head, and could open any one of them and expose its contents in the
tenth of a second. On! On! China, now. The Palace carried that day
£21,150's worth of china and glass. Electroplate. Countless shelves of
it. Innumerable repetitions of one article. Cruets, for instance. Coffee
spoons, for instance. 297 coffee spoons missing in four months. £161's
worth of silver lost in four months.
On! On! Yes, here was the silversmiths' repair shop. You saw how they
bent them back into shape. Very ingenious. And the re-plating. Yes, yes.
Now the linen. 40,000 serviettes, 24,000 chamber-towels. 24,000
table-cloths. 5,750 sheets. Varied from week to week of course. Pity she
couldn't see the wine stocks; but they were chiefly at Craven Street.
£322,000's worth of wines, including £50,000's worth reserves in France.
£55,000's worth of cigars. Curious that cigars matured best in a room
with a south-east aspect. A big cigar took eighteen months to mature, a
little one only six months. On! On!
Evelyn looked at his watch.
"You must go. You must go. I quite understand, Mr. Orcham. Quite. You
haven't _begun_ to see things, Miss Powler. But any time you can come
down, I shall be at your disposal. I think that all housekeepers, _and_
others, ought to visit the Stocks department. Valuable knowledge. Yes.
Valuable. Good-bye. So glad you came. Not at all. Not at all. Delighted.
I love people to be interested as you've been."
"That man," said Evelyn in the corridor, "that man has seventeen
children and seventeen grandchildren. At least seventeen was the last I
heard. It may be eighteen by this time. He must be getting on."
III
He conducted her through more corridors and then down a very steep,
narrow, steel staircase. Increasing warmth. An odour of warm oil.
Rumblings of machinery in motion. Violet saw from above an interior that
recalled a glimpse which she had once had of the engine-room of a
Margate steamer; but this interior was very much larger. A broad man
came to meet the visitors at the foot of the steel staircase.
"Good morning, sir. I was beginning to think something had turned up to
stop you from coming."
"No!" said Evelyn. "I should have telephoned you in that case. This is
Miss Powler." He explained Violet and her presence there. "Mr.
Ickeringway," he said to Violet. "Our chief engineer. We robbed the Navy
of him."
Mr. Ickeringway cordially pressed Violet's hand in a hand broad to match
his body. A man of fifty, neat in navy blue, with grey hair, a loud
voice, a calm pale face, and an expression on it of authoritative and
slightly humorous fortitude.
"If you could see the new well now, sir. It's just the moment." He
turned to Violet: "Yes, miss, I'm a naval man. We've a staff down here
of sixty-eight, and all but three of 'em are naval men too."
He led them across the great engine-hall to an enclosure where were
three frightening steel-rimmed and brick-lined holes, with thin shafts
running down them into Australia.
"Five hundred feet deep, miss," said Mr. Ickeringway, and then suddenly
began a discussion with the panjandrum, who bent his head towards the
chief engineer's. Violet gazed around, and saw clumps of machinery here
and there, some moveless, some whizzing, clicking, sizzling; also a few
of the sixty-eight visibly wandering around on inspections, or
stationary at some job.
By this time the ex-staff-manageress of the Laundry (whose small
engine-room Cyril Purkin had never encouraged her to see) was incapable
of receiving any but vague impressions of semi-stupefied amazement. She
had ceased to try to follow intelligently the procession of wonders, or
even to try to seem intelligent. She did not listen to the conversation
between the two men. She heard Mr. Orcham finish it with the words:
"That's understood then. You can go right ahead."
"Better look at this, miss," Mr. Ickeringway woke her. "It's the new
artesian well. Electric pump. It blows the water from the bottom
straight up on to the roof. You wouldn't think we use 22,000 gallons of
water an hour in the Palace. But that's it. 22,000. And soft water. This
is about the only hotel in London that has soft water. Because we don't
depend on public supply."
"Of course," said Evelyn. "We couldn't have had all this"--he waved an
imaginary cane in the direction of the open hall--"if we hadn't built
our new wings. All this is under the new last wing. Wouldn't have been
room for it under the old part of the building."
"Now you'd better begin with the boilers, miss," said the chief
engineer, and drew the party out towards the mammoth row of boilers,
from which ran a series of thick serpentine hosepipes. "If anything
happened to these, miss--well! Nine fires. Oil-fed. Twenty-five tons of
oil a day. Equal to fifty of coal. Yes. And here's the turbine. 4,500
revs., miss, and you can hardly hear it. It's bedded in springs so it
won't vibrate the hotel down."
Suddenly there was a terrific roar. Violet started violently. She
thought that the entire hall was about to blow up and blow the hotel
into the air. Evelyn's hand was strongly on her arm.
"It's all right. It's all right!" he protectively soothed her.
And she was in fact tranquillised instantly. So that she felt safe amid
mysterious perils and called herself a baby and an idiot.
"They're only testing the new semi-Diesel," said the chief engineer
casually, and pointed to where two pigmy men in beige overalls were
perched on a huge dark active mass of a machine. The roar died away.
Violet was led on from machine to machine, comprehending the purpose of
none.
She heard the chief engineer say:
"There isn't much of a load on now. There'll be more at one o'clock, and
a lot more in the evening. We get through a lot of current. Well, there
are twenty-nine electric lifts. And a thousand horse-power of electric
motors. And about six thousand light-units a day we get through. Come
and see where we wash all the air for the public rooms and corridors,
and ozonise it, and warm it in winter and cool it in summer."
On, on! The brine-bath, twenty-eight tons of brine. The ice-making
apparatus (reached by a slope upwards). Seven tons of ice a day. Violet
gazed.
"You'd better not stay in here," Evelyn cautioned her. He was
benevolently protecting her again. "So liable to catch cold in these
sudden changes of temperature. I shouldn't like you to be laid up the
first day." He smiled. She smiled weakly, unintelligently.
Back into the engine-hall.
"And you do all your own repairs here, don't you, Ickeringway?" said
Evelyn, as if prompting the chief engineer in the recital of the
catalogue of marvels.
"We do, miss. All. I think we may say that this is a self-containing
unit, same as a ship, but a bit more." Violet addressed another glance
of flabbergasted admiration to Mr. Orcham and Mr. Ickeringway. She saw
that Mr. Orcham was passionately proud of his establishment, and she
thought it was nice of him, and so man-like and so childlike, to be so
innocent in his glorious pride.
IV
A few minutes later Evelyn looked at his watch. The chief engineer, in
common with all the other heads of departments, knew the proper response
to that gesture.
"A wonderful fellow, that," said Evelyn, at the top of the steel
staircase. "I've never seen him excited. Never. And his men would do
anything for him. They simply worship him. I don't quite know why."
"Yes," thought Violet. "And _you_ simply worship all your heads of
departments. You're so proud of them you can't keep it to yourself. And
of course they wouldn't do anything for you! Oh no! Naturally they
wouldn't!"
Silence in the long, narrow, squalid corridor. No rumour or vibration of
any machinery. A workman passed, halting close against the wall to leave
room for the two visitors from the luxury world. Then another. In the
silence Violet soon regained her poise. She was touched as much by Mr.
Orcham's simple pride in his heads of departments as by his calm
protectiveness over her. There were tears of emotional sympathy in the
eyes of her soul, if not a trace of feeling in the eyes of her serene
face.
"It makes you think," she murmured.
"What? All that? You haven't seen half. Not half.... Yes. You could
understand anyone wanting to buy this place," he said.
"Oh yes!" she agreed eagerly. "I suppose you get lots of offers."
"I don't get lots, but I get one now and then." He spoke carelessly, as
if such matters had no importance.
"I remember somebody thinking of trying to buy it a long time ago."
"Oh!" Evelyn's tone sharpened into astonishment and curiosity. "Who was
that?"
"Sir Henry Savott. He told my sister once, and she told me. She said to
me: 'He hasn't finished with his department-stores business, but he's
thinking about something else--hotels. Imperial Palace and so on.' I
remember the very words." Instantly Violet had an idea that she might be
breaking a confidence. But she did not care. She exulted in her
wrongdoing, if wrongdoing it was. She wanted to interest him, and he
would certainly be interested. The information might even in some
unguessable way be useful to him. And her sister was dead.
"Oh!" said Evelyn very lightly. "_In_deed!" As if he considered that Sir
Henry had a nerve to think of buying the Imperial Palace.
"But I expect he gave up the idea," Violet added.
"And when was this?" Evelyn asked.
"I couldn't say, sir, now. Years since."
Evelyn said no more.
When by the swinging-door marked "Private" they had re-entered the
decorated and gaudy world of mirrors and gilt and luxury and uniformed
attendants, Violet stopped resolutely at the lift, which she recognised
as her lift by the features of the attendant.
"Thank you very much, sir. About those flowers for Miss Maclaren's
rooms, sir, that you said I was to see to. Can you tell me how I get
them? Where? I oughtn't to ask Miss Maclaren, ought I?" She half smiled.
"No," Evelyn replied, with an almost snubbing frigidity. "You'd better
not ask me things like that. You go upstairs and find out. You'll have
far more important things than that to find out. I count on you to fall
on your feet. The Floors are in a bit of a mess, I mean as regards
supervising. So I count on you."
"Sorry, sir," said Violet, meekly accepting the rebuke.
She pressed the rebuke to her bosom, like a saint an arrow. He was
right. She had been wrong. Imagine a floor-housekeeper worrying the
Director with a silly question about flowers! Obviously it was her
_business_ to fall on her feet--part of her duty. She had been presuming
upon his benevolence towards her. He waved a hand negligently.
"Good morning, sir. Thank you again."
As the lift ascended she reflected: "I'd better keep as quiet as
possible about all this sightseeing this morning. I don't want to start
with a lot of jealousies. I'd better pretend it was nothing, but he just
told me to come and I went, and they'll all have to go. It's a pity I
was the first to go. That'll make them jealous--without anything else."
Still, at the bottom of her soul she was not displeased that her yet
unknown colleagues should be jealous of her relations with Mr. Orcham.
Relations! The thought recurred: Would she ever see him again? What
about the chain of authority? Now she had to learn her job in a couple
of days or so. She decided that she could. She resolved that she would.
The lamp blazed up in her brain with fresh ardour. And she felt joyously
inspired to terrific deeds.
CHAPTER XXXII
INITIATION
I
On the eighth-floor, her own, Violet saw a fairly young woman in black
talking to Beatrice Noakes in the doorway of the head-housekeeper's
room. The fairly young woman in black, catching sight of Violet,
immediately stepped out into the corridor, at the same time dismissing
Beatrice.
"You're Miss Powler?" she called, while Violet was still twenty feet
away.
"Yes."
"My name's Maclaren, and I suppose I'm head-housekeeper now. I've been
asking for you everywhere." The accent was Scottish, the voice bright,
but obviously that of a woman both fatigued and harassed.
"Sorry," said Violet. "Mr. Orcham sent for me."
"Just come in here a moment, will you? I've only got five minutes. I
must go back to Fourth." Miss Maclaren shut the door, and the two stood
close together in the half-dismantled room.
"What did Mr. Orcham want?"
Violet explained that she was the discoverer of Mrs. O'Riordan's flight,
and related the circumstances preceding the telephonic summons to the
Director's office. She finished: "He said as I was down there he'd show
me some things in the basement, so I should know."
"Oh!" murmured Miss Maclaren negligently.
Looking at her close, Violet at once put eight or ten years on to her
first estimate of Miss Maclaren's age; the new head-housekeeper had
wrinkles and a rather worn expression. Her powder was not very well
distributed.
"She seems inclined to be decent," thought Violet. "But she's disturbed.
As she's my boss I'd better be a bit careful." And aloud, with pleasant
animation: "I should be so glad if you'd just tell me what I have to
do."
"You have to inspect all the rooms that are unoccupied or empty for the
time being. First of all you turn on all the lights, whether it's
daylight or not, to see they're in order. Try the curtains. See all the
taps are right and don't drip. And the locks right everywhere, and
everything clean. Bed-linen has to be changed every two days. But some
visitors want it changed every day. And you have to watch the
chambermaids and----"
"I've talked to one, as I said."
"Beatrice, I expect. She's good. But she thinks she's Mr. Cousin." Miss
Maclaren's tone hardened. "She'll want to run you, instead of you
running her."
"I think I can see to that," Violet put in with a smile.
"Never give them an inch--I mean the maids. Not an inch. And don't give
them half a minute in the mornings. They have to sign on at half-past
six. And every second morning you have to be on duty at half-past six to
see them sign on, on both Eighth and Seventh. Miss Prentiss--she's
Seventh--does it on the other morning. In turns, you see. I may as well
tell you the hours now. You have half a day a week off, and every second
week-end--from Saturday at three, about, till Monday morning. You have
four hours off every day--if you're lucky. When you have early morning
duty, 6.30, you finish at nine at night. On the other days you begin at
nine in the morning and finish at midnight. Of course they're long
hours."
"Oh! That's all right," Violet responded, with an enthusiasm which she
did not quite feel.
She had not known the hours. Mr. Cousin had said nothing about them. Nor
had Mrs. O'Riordan. Miss Brury might have given her information during
the week they had spent together at the Laundry; but Miss Brury had
plainly indicated an unwillingness to talk about the Imperial Palace.
She even affected not to know that Violet had been engaged for the
hotel. Violet now calculated that her hours would be between sixty and
seventy a week, whereas at the Laundry they had been fifty-five a week.
Also at the hotel she would have only three clear evenings off in a
fortnight. No more evening rehearsals of the Dramatic Society, and other
fun! She feared for the future of the Dramatic Society, whose members
she had left in a state of forlorn depression. In spite of this, the
lamp still burned brightly in her brain.
"And then," Miss Maclaren proceeded. "You have to be ready to go into
any room instantly if any visitor asks for the housekeeper, to settle
any trouble."
"Yes," said Violet. "I remember Mr. Orcham telling me about that when he
first sent for me. I daresay I can manage it. I've had to do it before."
She related her sojourn as temporary housekeeper at a large place in the
country. "Do I have any keys?" she enquired.
"You have a pass-key to the rooms and duplicate keys of the
linen-closets. That's all. Now you'd better begin now with--let me
see--my head's all in a whirl." Miss Maclaren put her hands over her
eyes. "Mrs. O'Riordan leaving like this. I'd no idea of it, Miss Powler.
Not a _notion_."
"It must be frightfully trying. Mr. Orcham told me that I must first of
all see to your rooms here."
"Oh! That doesn't matter," snapped Miss Maclaren. "There's lots of
things more important than that."
"But if he finds out I haven't done it," Violet smiled. "I might be in
trouble--right at the start. He seemed very anxious for it to be done.
But of course I know I take my orders from you."
"Oh! Very well!" Miss Maclaren impatiently yielded. "But I do wish Mr.
Orcham wouldn't try to run everything himself. He always does." She
smiled with a sort of dismal comic resignation. "Let him have his own
way. I'm on Fourth now. I'll give instructions for all my things to be
sent up immediately. And you do what you like with them. I've no time.
There's been an oak and wicker bedstead simply broken to bits on Fifth.
Some actress. She must have done it herself in one of her tantrums. But
of course nobody's done it! Mr. Cousin's secretary just tells me in her
casual way Mrs. O'Riordan's gone, and Mr. Orcham telephones me himself
and says I'm to take charge as quick as I can, and the first thing I
have is this bedstead affair. It's worth £40 at least. If I was Mr.
Cousin I should ask her royal highness to leave to-day, but he won't, I
know he won't, because she's supposed to be a great actress and good
publicity. You'd hardly believe it, but she's making a fuss because a
new bedstead hasn't been brought in at once! That'll just show you the
kind of thing a housekeeper has to face. Has your luggage come?"
"Yes. It's here."
"Have you unpacked?"
"Not yet."
"Well, while you're waiting for my things you go and get straight
yourself."
Violet gave three little nods of obedient assent. The two had not even
shaken hands, but Violet was already feeling sympathetic towards her
superior. She thought: "I'll let her see she can depend on me." She had
the sensation of having been in the hotel for days.
Miss Maclaren hurried off. Not a word about her return. Not a word about
meals. Not a word as to whether that night Violet would be on duty till
nine o'clock or till midnight. As soon as she was gone Violet went to
her own room and rang the bell, and then, having pulled open all the
drawers and cupboard-doors, instantly began to unpack; she had found in
the top middle drawer of the desk a lot of empty forms for hotel linen
and for laundry.
II
"Oh! Can I help you to unpack, miss?" said an eager voice, Beatrice's.
Violet was bending over a trunk on the bed. Beatrice seemed fatter than
before. Plump was a slightly inadequate description of her. And she was
certainly more eager. The tidings of the definite departure of the
head-housekeeper had spread through the entire hotel, exciting its life,
and giving to everybody a quite unaccustomed zest.
"No thank you, Beatrice. But I'll tell you what you can do."
"Yes, miss."
"And at once. Go and do out Miss Maclaren's rooms, as quick as you can."
"Miss Maclaren is on Fourth, miss."
"She's coming up here. I meant Mrs. O'Riordan's rooms. What's the number
of them?"
"Oh, I see, miss. They've no number."
"Well, go and do them out now. And put Mrs. O'Riordan's trunks and
things out into the corridor."
"I misdoubt if I can move the big one by myself, miss. And chambermaids
aren't supposed----"
"Well, then, get someone to help you. Get a waiter."
"Oh, miss, not a waiter. I daren't. Us and the valets are about equal as
you may say. But a waiter. If I got giving order-messages to the waiters
I should have old Mr. Perosi down on me like half-a-ton of coal."
"Who's Mr. Perosi?"
"He's the head-waiter for all the floors, miss. And he's terrible
particular. Mrs. O'Riordan and him once had some words, an' it was just
like the hotel being on fire. Mr. Orcham had to settle that, he had. Of
course----"
"Then get a valet to help you."
"Well, miss----"
"How many valets are there on this floor?"
"Two, miss. What I was going to say, miss, one's pressing a suit urgent
at this very moment, and the other's off."
"And the other maids? How many are there of you up here?"
"Four, miss. And forty rooms. Besides all the bits of sewing we have to
do for visitors. Of course there's more rooms on the other floors. But
here you see there's more store-rooms and the carpenter's shop, besides
the head-housekeeper's rooms and the lampshade room. There's more maids
on the lower floor, but forty bedrooms among three of us!... And
things are a bit messed up to-day. Miss Prentiss didn't see us sign on
this morning, and you know what young girls is, miss. I've been telling
'em. They were fearful late this morning. But of course, miss, if
you----"
"Come along, Beatrice. Come along," said Violet, stopping the spate once
more, and preceded her down the corridor to Mrs. O'Riordan's late home,
and into the bedroom thereof.
She thought, reflecting on what Miss Maclaren had said:
"This Beatrice just isn't going to run me, anyway." And aloud, gaily:
"Now take that outside, and take _that_ outside. And I'll take this."
Three of the lighter articles of baggage were thus deposited in the
corridor. "Now come back. Take that end of this trunk. I'll take the
other."
"Yes, miss."
When all the baggage was in the corridor Violet said, a little
breathless, but very happy:
"Now you get your brushes and things and do these rooms out, and come
and tell me as soon as they're finished."
"Yes, miss."
"You'll easily do them before your dinner. When _is_ your dinner-time?"
"Twelve o'clock, miss. And if we're late----"
"But you won't be late."
"No, miss. I was only saying if we are late we're likely to lose on it.
There's two relays. I'm in the first this week. When I first came here
the food--well, you couldn't eat it. But it's better now. Though they do
say it only costs the management one-and-six a day a head of us. You
see, our dining-room's down in the upper basement. Same as yours, miss.
The floor-housekeepers have a table in the room next to ours. The
page-boys eat in there too. It's just been redecorated. It ain't very
easy to find, miss. But they'll tell you at the lift."
"I daresay they will," Violet agreed, departing, and Beatrice waddled
away in search of utensils.
To Violet, the woman was now rather a different creature from the
relatively cautious, reconnoitring Beatrice whom she had talked to at
their previous interview. Decent still, and inclined to be obliging, and
assuredly cheerful; but too desirous of imposing herself. Violet knew
the type well. No means of silencing that type. It would chatter even if
it was drowning at sea in a gale of wind. Violet leaned now to Miss
Maclaren's general estimate of chambermaids. Give them an inch....
Still, there was an expression on the florid face of Beatrice that
pleased her. She divined that the key to the handling of Beatrice was a
resolute and unfluctuating cheerfulness. In regard to Miss Maclaren, she
hesitated as to method. She suspected that Miss Maclaren was a worrier,
whose bright voice was intended to indicate that she was for ever
bearing up in great and unfair ordeals; a fixed believer in the
injustice of destiny towards herself. Here Miss Maclaren had been
promoted to the sublime situation of head-housekeeper at the Imperial
Palace Hotel, and yet she was finding sorrow and grievance in good
fortune! Violet surmised that the plant of Miss Maclaren's existence
would best flourish in an atmosphere of brave gloom, watered
occasionally with tears. But Violet could seldom weep. And she despised
tearfulness in others. Her instinct was nearly always to be bland and
smiling. Withal she decided that Miss Maclaren was able, conscientious,
industrious, and to be relied upon, which was something, if not
everything.
"I've got to be damn careful," said Violet to herself in warning. Nobody
had ever heard her use an improper word, except the late Susan. (The
sisters would now and then luxuriate in frightful swearing matches, for
fun, to give colour to grey life.) Now Violet had no one to swear with;
so, infrequently, she indulged in solitary, silent swearing, to the same
end.
As, with rapid judgment of the suitability of particular drawers and
cupboards for particular articles, she made continual dashes from the
bedside to the wardrobe, dressing-table or desk, distributing her attire
and possessions, none could have guessed that her mind was dwelling upon
the imagined figure of Mr. Orcham. It was. Sometimes she could see his
face quite plainly. She liked his funny teeth, and his warm eyes, and
the way he held his head up and walked more on his toes than on his
heels. (A bit stealthy, somehow.) But his chin puzzled her, and his nose
stuck out too much. He was always changing. Now stiff and curt, now
flexible and acquiescent. There were moments when you'd think he was
going to be positively intimate; and then no, he was as straight as a
poker again. Fearfully well-dressed, but quietly. She was sure that he
preferred girls to look smart. He must be mildly interested in women.
She knew nothing about him, in that department, save that he was a
widower. He was one of your mysterious bland persons. (She liked
blandness, and practised it naturally, without effort.) Something of the
child in him. And something of the woman in him. Not what you'd call so
frightfully masculine. Yet he was.
And you couldn't guess from the way he behaved that he was a terrific
swell. Yet you could. Of course she didn't know very much about terrific
swells. Perhaps they were all like that. No, it couldn't be so. Because
Sir Henry Savott wasn't like that, and he was a terrific swell, and some
of his friends who came to Claygate were swells too, and they weren't
like Mr. Orcham, either. Well, perhaps one or two of them might have
been. But not like Mr. Orcham after all. She'd never met anyone like Mr.
Orcham. Yes, she judged for the second time that day, he was a
gentleman. Here was the thought that brightened her lamp. She would
never see him, because you couldn't miss links in the chain of
responsibility. But a large part of her inspiration to work was the
desire to be worthy of his choice. He had chosen her--he said so. _He_
had chosen her; he, the head of the whole hotel. Difficult not to forget
that he was as high up as he certainly was--there was something _equal_
about him. He might be stiff, but he never looked down on you. The way
he would stand aside for you, and open doors for you--not always, but
sometimes--it made you almost think you were a lady. Of course she _was_
a lady, but she knew what she meant.
III
She had purposely left her door open. She heard a trundling, squeaking
sound in the corridor, and peeped out. A valet in sleeves of shiny black
pushing a luggage-carrier.
"These Miss Maclaren's things?"
"Yes, miss."
"All right. You know the rooms?"
"Yes, miss."
"You're from Fourth?" She enjoyed saying 'Fourth.'
"Yes, miss."
Little more than three-quarters of an hour had passed. Evidently Miss
Maclaren had the gift of getting things done with speed. Violet
continued her unpacking until she heard the trundling sound again. Then
she hurried to the head-housekeeper's rooms. They were finished. Praise
was due, thought Violet.
"You've been pretty quick, Beatrice."
"Thank you, miss. I think you'll find everything's clean. Of course when
we----"
"What are these keys?"
Four keys, one large and three small, lay prominent on an arm of the
sofa.
"Miss Maclaren's sent them up, miss. They're your pass-key and the keys
of the linen-closets."
"Good." Violet at once attached them to the key-chain on her girdle.
"I suppose I'd better undo some of these things, miss. It doesn't matter
about my dinner." Beatrice pointed to a couple of trunks and some small
bags and an umbrella and a lot of cloaks and oddments reposing right in
the middle of the doorway leading towards the bedroom.
Violet looked at the clock near the ceiling over the fireplace.
"It does matter about your dinner, Beatrice. I shan't be late for mine
and I won't have you being late for yours. Off you go! You'll just be in
time."
"Oh! If it's like that, miss!" Beatrice smiled richly. "I was only going
to tell you----"
"Tell me afterwards, when you come up."
"But _you_ won't be up, miss."
"Well, when I do come up then."
Beatrice went out, smiling still against rebuff. And the moment Beatrice
was gone Violet seized on the cloaks. Poor garments. No style. A shabby
pinkish transparent mackintosh. A shabby umbrella. A good, warm, heavy
rug, which Violet immediately laid on the sofa. Two large photographs of
two serried bands of young men--one band in football kit--with wide
white margins in black frames. Two smaller photographs, an old man and
an old woman, similarly framed. And another photograph of a tiny country
cottage with low hills behind, framed in straw with bows. Miss
Maclaren's relatives? Miss Maclaren's birthplace? One cushion. Two
vases. Ten books. Violet hung the two large photographs on either side
of the hearth, and the portraits on either side of the door; and she put
the vases and the cottage with hills on the mantelpiece, and the cushion
on the easy-chair. The room became inhabited, took on some faint
similitude of a home.
Then she dragged the trunks and the bags into the bedroom. She opened
the smallest of the bags. Toilet. Brushes, toothbrush, sponge in a bag,
pin-cushion, etc. She disposed the articles on the dressing-table and
the lavatory basin. One of the trunks was not completely shut. She
opened it--and closed it. No! Sacrilege! She would have been glad to
empty the trunks and the other bags; but she dared not. Prying! She must
be damn careful. However, she hung up the cloaks and the mackintosh in
the enormous wardrobe, and propped up the umbrella in a corner. Well,
Miss Maclaren probably wouldn't mind her things being unpacked for her.
She wasn't that sort. But Miss Maclaren just _might_ mind. You never
knew!
"My God! The flowers!"
She had forgotten them. She had meant to enquire from Beatrice about the
machinery for getting flowers. "It slipped my memory, miss": a phrase
familiar to her in the Laundry. She hated it. How did you get flowers?
She might telephone down to the other Marian. No. That would be a sign
of weakness. Stocks Department? She might telephone down to Mr.
Stairforth, the breathless talker. No. She daren't. Besides, though
there must be a stock of flowers somewhere, she had noticed no stock of
flowers in Mr. Stairforth's dark realm. She felt helpless. She felt
alone on the floor. She looked around. There were two glass vases of
flowers, one on the window-sill; but the blossoms were obviously faded
and forlorn beyond revival. She ran into her own room and returned
thence with the large vase of flowers. Quite enough in it for two vases.
She threw the dead flowers into the waste-paper basket, emptied the
vases at the lavatory-basin, refilled them, and divided the flowers and
arranged them in the vases, one in each room. They made a most
respectable display. She ran back towards her own room with the empty
vases, her keys swinging and rattling very cheerfully, and was accosted
by a pale waiter emerging from one of the rooms.
"You are asked for here, miss," said the waiter briefly, in a foreign
accent, without enquiring who or what she was.
"Me? I'm the new floor-housekeeper."
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"I do not know quite. I have been three days away ill."
"Is it a lady?"
"No. A gentleman."
"Very well. I'm coming."
She went on to her bedroom with the vase. She was rather frightened. Her
major duties were commencing. She fingered her pass-key. Supposing she
couldn't fit it into the door.... An angry or a dissatisfied
customer? Tact, tact!
CHAPTER XXXIII
A FRIEND
I
The door, she saw as soon as she stood close to it, bore three numbers,
and she assumed therefore that it opened into a suite of three rooms and
that the single occupant was a person of wealth. One of her unformulated
definitions of a person of wealth was a traveller who could afford a
private sitting-room in a hotel--any hotel, not merely an expensive
hotel such as the Imperial Palace. A hotel private sitting-room seemed
to her to be the very symbol and illustration of fabulous luxury. As for
three rooms, what could a visitor want with three rooms. "How silly of
me!" she thought suddenly. "Of course! The bathroom is one of the
rooms!"
Happily the key fitted itself without any fuss into the lock. She was
extremely nervous as she turned the key, pushed open the door, and
withdrew the key. Never in her life had she seen a visitor's bedroom in
any hotel. Her summit of luxury had been a bedroom in a rather good
boarding-house at Ramsgate. She had witnessed various wonders of the
Imperial Palace, but its guest-rooms were absolutely unknown to her. And
yet she was floor-housekeeper on Eighth. Uncanny situation! 'Uncanny'
was the only word for it. The visitor might expose her ignorance by his
first question, his first demand. And the customer might be a very
strange type of man, might even be a foreigner. She guessed that these
big cosmopolitan luxury hotels were inhabited by all sorts of strange,
haughty individuals. For a moment again she almost wished herself back
in the homely vaporous security of the Laundry, ordering girls about and
keeping an invisible wall between herself and Mr. Cyril Purkin.
In front of her was a tiny lobby or hall. Hats and coats clustered on a
hatstand--sufficient of them for several men. A half-open door ahead
showed a bathroom. There were doors on either side, both shut. She
tapped on one. No answer. She opened it. Bedroom. Then she tapped on the
other one.
"Come in!" An authoritative male voice, muffled by the thickness of the
door.
Her heart announced an increased activity. Yes, she was frightened. As
she opened the door she might have been a soldier going over the top in
the Great War. A gentleman was standing expectant in the middle of the
room, hands in pockets. For one second, in her perturbation, Violet did
not recognise him. Then the figure and the rather wizened face with its
small eyes resolved themselves for her into those of Sir Henry Savott.
She had a feeling of thankfulness. At any rate this was no overbearing
stranger. She knew Sir Henry and a lot about him and his idiosyncrasies.
Had she not served him for a month and seen him both bland and stern?
Also he had been remarkably polite to her in the entrance-hall of the
Imperial Palace not long since. She was indeed relieved.
Sir Henry's features relaxed into a smile astonished and welcoming. He
had ceased to be the consciously great man which he had always been in
the big house at Claygate during her stay there. He moved towards her
with hand outstretched; the hand clasped hers with warmth; and at the
same time he exclaimed:
"Now what... what in the name of coincidence is the meaning of this?
How are you? I'm delighted to see a familiar face." All in one breath.
Violet explained what she was.
"This is my first day here," she said. Somewhat excited by the
encounter, she had an impulse to add: "And this is the first room I've
seen, and you're the first visitor who has sent for me, and I hardly
know where I am yet." But a natural prudence silenced her. Instead, she
added: "What can I do for you, Sir Henry?" In a rather formal tone. An
instinctive sense of propriety always prompted her to keep her place and
to encourage other people to keep theirs. Sir Henry, however, in his
cordiality, apparently desired not to be formal. He sat down.
"Do sit down," he said.
"I'm all right, thank you, Sir Henry," Violet answered firmly, but very
nicely. She was not going to be caught by any waiter or other chance
entrant sitting down in the room of a male visitor, and especially on
her first day. No! Moreover, if such a freedom was not forbidden by the
hotel code, well, it ought to be!
She had never been aware of much sympathy with Sir Henry. He had
characteristics which she disliked. His quick, sharp gestures and
movements, designed--she often thought--to deceive people as to his age.
His bristly moustache, which in her opinion ought either to be allowed
to grow a little more or to be completely suppressed. His chin, which
was ugly and sinister. His teeth, which seemed always hungry. And his
glance, inquisitive and suspicious. If she trusted him, it was not
without reluctance.
Still, her sister Susan, while reserved about him--even to Violet--had
certainly both trusted and liked him. He had meant a deal to Susan; and
he had invariably treated Susan well. As indeed he had treated Violet
herself. Violet had nothing definable against him; and, further, she had
followed Susan in sympathising with him in his conjugal difficulties.
And now, as she stood primly before him, she felt sorry for him. And
neither he nor anybody else could have guessed why.
It was because the sitting-room was so small. (The bedroom too was
small.) After the immense spacious interiors of the house at Claygate,
it seemed a perfect shame to Violet that the great opulent man should
have to content himself, or should content himself, with rooms
relatively so tiny. As a fact, neither of his rooms here was much larger
than her own. She was disappointed in the size of the rooms at the
amazing Imperial Palace.
"Well, Miss Powler," said Sir Henry. "I'm genuinely glad to see you
here. I seem to remember Mr. Orcham mentioning to me that there was some
idea of your coming here. I'm glad because I'm quite sure you were
thrown away at that Laundry. This is just the place for you."
('Miss Powler.' At Claygate he had always called Susan 'Susan' and
Violet 'Violet,' except in the presence of the servants.)
"You're very kind, Sir Henry," Violet responded. "But I've a great deal
to learn."
"Not you. You were first-rate at my house. You know all about maids and
valets and so on. And you know exactly how to treat guests. You've got
nothing to learn, really, except--what shall I say?--the geography of
the hotel. And a few tuppenny-halfpenny rules."
"It's understood it takes six months or more to train a housekeeper
here, Sir Henry," said Violet. But she was impressed by his instant
grasp of essentials, and, flattered, she felt inclined to agree with his
estimate of the situation.
"Not for a woman like you," said he, positive and slightly impatient. "A
fool couldn't be trained in six months or six years. But you have
intelligence, and you know it. You're bound to have a successful career.
Of course"--he raised a finger--"accidents _do_ happen. I don't think
for a moment they will, but you can't be sure. I'm convinced you'll rise
high in this place. But if anything should happen, I want you to know
that in some other hotels, anyhow one--and there may be more, what I say
goes. And if ever you want a change, you just send me one line, one
line, and I'll fix it. Oh yes! I'll do it for my own sake and glad to!"
"It's very kind of you, Sir Henry. Very kind. But I hope I shan't--I
don't think----"
"Neither do I. I'm only saying 'if.' And there's something else--you
don't mind me giving you a tip, do you?"
Violet shook her head and smiled. Assuredly Sir Henry was strengthening
her belief in herself. And he was indeed kind. Assuredly she felt
uplifted once more.
"I suppose you don't know any French?" Sir Henry resumed. "No. I know
you don't, because I remember once when I had Monsieur Messein down at
Claygate and there was some mix-up in his bedroom, Miss Gracie had to
interpret."
"No, Sir Henry. I did begin to learn French at the South-West London
Polytechnic, but I forgot it all as soon as I left there."
"Well, take my tip and learn French. In this new business of yours here
it'll be of the greatest use to you. Wouldn't be much good in an
ordinary English hotel, of course. But this is a cosmopolitan show where
you get all sorts of clients. It would give you a sort of a standing,
you see. In France and so on housekeepers and cashiers and
reception-clerks--they're often women--can speak English, have to; but
in England, even in London, how often do you see a housekeeper who can
talk anything but English? Scarcely ever. I undertake to say there isn't
one housekeeper in the I.P. can speak French. Of course you always hear
that English is the international language. It may be. It is. But not in
the luxury world, and the luxury world's your world, you know. Think it
over, will you?"
"Oh, I will, Sir Henry," Violet replied, enthusiastic, but--as it
were--dreamily enthusiastic.
She was dreamy in the suddenly induced marvellous vision of herself as a
young woman able to gabble away in French to foreigners who could not
speak English. "Give her a sort of standing!" It would. In her vision
she could hear Miss Maclaren saying on other floors in her
lowland-Scottish accent: "Better send for Miss Powler. Where's Miss
Powler? Miss Powler can talk French. Miss Powler will see the lady--or
the gentleman." It would be wonderful. Too wonderful to be true! She
wanted to begin to learn French the next minute. The lamp burned still
brighter in her brain. Mr. Orcham could talk French, she was sure. He
would be impressed if he knew that she could talk French too. Mr. Cousin
_was_ French. What fun it would be if, one day when she had to go down
and see Mr. Cousin, she started the interview right off in French! What
a difference between the old Violet in the Laundry, and the new
French-chattering Violet in Sir Henry's luxury world!
But she was a practical girl, and she emerged from her dream into
realisation.
"It might be rather hard for me to do it here, Sir Henry," she said.
"The hours are pretty long, and perhaps I couldn't get out."
"Hard? Here? Couldn't get out? What do you want to get out for? Why,
there must be scores of people in this place who talk French better than
they talk English! And some of them would be glad to teach you. You
could easily come to an arrangement. Simplest thing in the world. A
little enterprise needed; that's all."
"I shall," said Violet positively, her brown eyes lighted up. "I'm very
much obliged, Sir Henry."
II
He had spoken benevolently, persuasively, even coaxingly. She felt more
sympathetic towards him than she had ever felt. Why was he so
good-natured? Possibly because she happened to be Susan's sister. Surely
he would not have shown the same interest in any other housekeeper! He
couldn't. Of course she had served in his house, run his house. But ages
ago, and not for long. The reason for his interest must be Susan. Anyhow
he was full of commonsense. And he certainly did grasp a situation.
Violet admired commonsense and grasp more than anything else. He had
opened her eyes, that he had!
In her admiration she grew nearly at ease with him. Her association with
him in the past helped her to forget now that he was a millionaire, a
big public figure, whose name and whose photograph were constantly in
the newspapers. She saw in front of her not a legend but a human being,
who wanted a floor-housekeeper to look after some ordinary matter for
him in his rooms. It might be the starching of his shirts. (Though it
was the effect of life in the Laundry that turned her thoughts first to
shirts, she did recall that he used to be a bit particular about his
shirts.) And in advising her he had not tried to come the bigwig over
her. Not a trace of 'side.' No indication whatever of the difference in
class which separated them. He was just friendly and decent, in a nice
kind of fatherly style. And yet not quite fatherly. No. Just as a
friendly decent man to a decent self-respecting woman much younger than
himself. In her heart she apologised to him for her reservations
concerning him. The small, intimate sitting-room had a very agreeable,
reassuring atmosphere. Her simple father and mother would have been
proud to overhear that interview. And Mr. Orcham would have admitted
that she was falling on her feet.
"I'd like something done about this desk," said Sir Henry, suddenly
rising and going to the window, beneath which was a small knee-hole
desk, painted green to match the general tint of the room.
"Yes, Sir Henry." Violet braced herself to receive orders. Even her
voice was braced.
"It's too small for me."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"I want a larger one."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"And I want it changed as quick as you can."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
The benevolent paternal human being was transformed into the millionaire
autocrat; but there was still some benevolence in his tone, abrupt and
commanding as it had become.
He continued:
"I _was_ down on the third-floor. I had a larger desk there. I've been
out of London for a bit since I met you in the hall that day. I got back
yesterday, and I moved up here yesterday evening.... Pretty view
from here, isn't there?" He stared out of the window across St. James's
Park and the Green Park towards Piccadilly, all lying under a
mist-veiled autumn sun. "It was really because of the view I decided to
come up to this floor. You see, on the third-floor you're just level
with the tops of the trees, and you can't see a thing. I like a view.
Space. I can't do with being shut in. See the new Devonshire House
there? Then there's another thing. Say what you like about sound-proof
rooms, it's always quietest on the top floor. Now about this desk. You
see, my secretary, or one of 'em, has to be able to work at it
sometimes. There were two desks in my room downstairs."
"I expect it was a larger room, Sir Henry."
"It certainly was. These rooms are too narrow for their length. Still, I
prefer this room of the two. Only I want a larger desk. Understand?"
"Yes, Sir Henry. I'll get it as quickly as I can. But the
head-housekeeper's had some trouble downstairs, and as I told you, I
don't know a thing here yet. This is a question of geography." She
faintly smiled.
"Quite, quite," Sir Henry amiably concurred. "But I want a larger desk
and the sooner the better." His voice hardened. It was as if he took
away with one hand what he had given with the other; as if he had said:
"I don't care about your head-housekeeper and her troubles, and it's no
affair of mine that you don't know a thing. I want my desk."
"I'll go right now."
"That's a good girl."
This appellation startled Violet ever so little. She moved towards the
door.
"Just a minute. You remember Jim?"
"Jim, Sir Henry? I'm afraid I don't."
"Yes, you do. He was second footman at Claygate."
"Oh yes!" But she did not remember Jim. Even in her one month at
Claygate she had witnessed several changes of footmen.
"Well, I made him my valet. He's here with me now. He was taken ill in
the night on the journey, and I've sent him to bed. I wish you'd go and
see for yourself what's the matter with him. And then report to me. If
he's going to be really ill I must get a temporary. I only want to know
how I stand."
"Yes, Sir Henry." She was somewhat cooled, critical. At first she had
thought that the great man was anxious for his valet. Then she thought
that the great man was concerned only for himself.
"I'll stay here and wait," said the great man, warningly.
"Yes, Sir Henry."
Violet hurried out. How to procure the larger desk? Having procured it,
how to get the change effected? How to discover where this Jim was
lodged? She would not ask. Sir Henry would not know. He would probably
retort: "Oh! Don't ask me." Yet on the whole, for a first encounter with
a visitor in her capacity of floor-housekeeper, the meeting had passed
off very well. And Violet was happy, and still uplifted, and still held
a higher opinion than before of Sir Henry Savott. What a world was this
Imperial Palace world of rich, bewildering novelty and romantic
surprises! And she was on her mettle.
CHAPTER XXXIV
VIOLET AND MAC
I
"What's this?" Miss Maclaren demanded, with chill civility, of the
waiter who brought into her newly acquired sitting-room a small tray
containing a pot of tea, a jug of hot water, milk, sugar, and two cups
and saucers.
"Two teas," answered the waiter. It was the same man who had given to
Violet the message from Sir Henry Savott.
"I didn't say two 'dry' teas," said Miss Maclaren in a hard,
uncompromising tone, drier than the driest tea could be. "Please take
this away, and let me have it all on a larger tray, the one Mrs.
O'Riordan always had, and her tea-pot, and plenty of bread-and-butter,
and cakes, and some black-currant jam. And I'm in a hurry, please."
In silence the waiter withdrew with the tray.
"That's just like them," Miss Maclaren explained her grievance to
Violet, whom she had invited to take tea with her. "However, I believe
in beginning as you mean to go on. He knew perfectly well. The
floor-housekeepers have their tea downstairs where they have their other
meals. Only if they want tea upstairs they can have it in their
bedrooms. But it's what we call a 'dry' tea. Nothing to eat with it, you
know. But the head-housekeeper is at liberty to have whatever she wants,
and she's served by a floor-waiter, same as a visitor. Mrs. O'Riordan
always had that, and I shall. He was only trying it on. He hasn't been
here very long, and he's ill half the time, or pretends to be. Still, he
ought surely to have seen enough of me to know I'm not the sort of
person to try things on with. He soon will know--I'll attend to that!
Don't you think I'm right?"
"Rather!" Violet agreed.
She saw in Miss Maclaren a person who loved authority, who was very
jealous of her authority, newly acquired with the room, but who felt the
need at first of a little moral support in the exercise of the same. As
one who had until the previous day exercised a great deal of authority
over more than two hundred women and girls, Violet regarded herself as
nearly the moral equal of Miss Maclaren, and she felt that Miss Maclaren
so regarded her. But she was privately critical of Miss Maclaren's
method. Stony was the word to apply to it. No allowances made. Violet
usually managed to put herself in the place of a wrong-doer; which
enabled her often to read the wrong-doer's thoughts and thus gave her a
considerable advantage in handling the wrong-doer. It was because she
was reading Miss Maclaren's thoughts that she had replied with such
sympathy, "Rather!"
"You must have had some lively times down at the Laundry now and then,"
said Miss Maclaren.
"You may depend I had!" said Violet, with a troubled expression feigning
dark memories of the lively times. She added: "But of course it must be
much more difficult here--especially for you, with eight floors to keep
an eye on and so many different sorts of people too. We'd no foreigners
at the Laundry anyhow." The benevolent, deceitful little piece had here
said exactly the right thing to the brave martyr of the Floors. Miss
Maclaren despised and mistrusted all the foreigners on the staff, except
perhaps Mr. Cousin, whose impregnable blandness appealed much more to
her than to the somewhat temperamental Mrs. O'Riordan.
The sun was low in the sky. Not a ray of it came through the window. The
flame of the small autumn fire showed brighter in the first onset of the
dusk. The sofa was drawn close at an angle across the hearth. Miss
Maclaren sat in a corner of it, without leaning back. Violet sat on the
pouf. The two black-robed creatures, prim with office, soon lost some of
their primness in a chiefly physical sensation of nascent intimacy.
Violet opened her bag and boldly employed her lipstick.
"What lipstick do _you_ fancy, dear?" asked Miss Maclaren.
(Mr. Orcham was uncanny.)
"Michel," said Violet, pausing in her work. "It's a kind of an imitation
of Tanger, you know. But I think it's better. Not what you'd call cheap,
but it lasts for ages. If you ask me, I think the most expensive is the
cheapest."
"Yes?" said Miss Maclaren doubtfully. "I don't know what mine is,
really. But I know it's about finished. Mrs. O'Riordan always had
Chanel."
"Yes. That's one that lasts for ages, too."
Then the waiter arrived with another and a superior tray, laden
apparently with the whole contents of a Bond Street tea-shop and a
superior tea-service and superior china. He hesitated.
"Shall he put it on here?" Violet suggested, rising from the pouf.
"Yes."
Violet sat down by Miss Maclaren's side. Intimacy was increasing.
"Thank you," said Miss Maclaren, less harshly, to the waiter, who stood
expectant with a pad of order-slips in his hand.
"Will you sign, please, miss?" The waiter spoke with marked deference.
"Oh!" Miss Maclaren exclaimed, caught. She had forgotten that only 'dry'
teas required no signature. She signed the check, having first
scrutinised it. Glancing over the tray, she added to the waiter in the
most friendly manner, "Yes, this will be all I want. Thank you very
much."
"Thank you, miss." The waiter left.
"He's learnt his lesson," said Miss Maclaren, but with no bitterness;
rather with a smile. The magnificent spectacle of the tray had mollified
her. She picked up a _petit four_ and ate it at once. Then another. Her
mouth half-full, she mumbled to Violet: "Milk? Sugar?"
Violet had one lump, Miss Maclaren three. Miss Maclaren was of those who
enjoy their tea. Further, she had a sweet tooth--when sweets were
gratis. This immense and crushing weight of the Imperial Palace seemed
to slip from her responsible shoulders. The look on her worn,
well-shaped face gradually changed; the wrinkles were smoothed out; even
Violet's demeanour changed in sympathy with Miss Maclaren's.
"It must be rather fun, being head-housekeeper," she ventured.
"Well, I suppose it is, dear," said Miss Maclaren, who at that moment
was defining a head-housekeeper as a personage who could have what she
chose for tea. "I mean--it is and it isn't. Now Mr. Cousin asked me down
for lunch to-day, and Mr. Orcham was there too. Naturally, I couldn't
refuse, though really I hadn't a minute and they must have known it.
Wasn't as if they had much to tell me that was useful. No. Just talk.
It's extraordinary the amount of time men waste. I could have had my
lunch in five minutes. Do you know, I was there over an hour. It was in
Mr. Cousin's room. I suppose they just wanted to be friendly."
"And so they ought!" Violet put in. "But it was nice of them." She
wondered if she would ever be invited to lunch with the swells. Never.
"Oh, it was," said Miss Maclaren, who scarcely tried to conceal a
justifiable pride in the event. "And my word they do have meals, those
two." The greedy woman was speaking. "Mr. Cousin didn't say a lot, but
Mr. Orcham did, and they were both full of Mrs. O'Riordan. Mr. Orcham's
made up his mind she shan't have her wedding-present. He said he told
her if she didn't come to the dinner she wouldn't get any present. And
she did say she would come. So he's sending the plate back to the
silversmith's, and he says he's going to return all the subscriptions.
That means ten shillings I never expected to see again. Oh! He was very
light and jolly about it. But he meant it. You could see that. And when
he means a thing he does mean it, Mr. Orcham does. She oughtn't to have
run off like that. No! I must say I was very surprised. I should never
have thought it of her."
"I should think not indeed!" said Violet. "But I think just before
weddings women do get into a state. I've noticed it."
"Really?" Miss Maclaren casually murmured. "Still, she shouldn't have
done it." She lifted her shoulders censoriously, poured out more tea,
ate bread-and-butter, ate jam, ate more cakes.
II
There was a tap on the door. Mrs. O'Riordan's fluffy little
school-girlish secretary entered, notebook in hand.
"In half an hour, Agatha," said Miss Maclaren, turning her head,
grandly. The secretary nodded and vanished.
"Have another of these little cakes--petty fours as they call them,"
Miss Maclaren hospitably suggested.
"No, thanks. I can't eat any more."
"You haven't had any jam. Do have some."
Violet smiled and moved her head slowly from side to side.
"Another cup of tea?"
Violet nodded her head.
Having poured out two more cups, Miss Maclaren took for herself more
bread-and-butter, more jam, and more little cakes. She ate very quickly.
"No use leaving anything for _them_," said she, seizing as it were sadly
the last bit of food on the tray. "The cakes that are no more!" her
glance at the empty plates seemed to say. But her demeanour had become
quite animated, even gay. She was a completely changed woman: happy in
the satiating of her passion. She liked eating; she had authority to
order what she wanted; she had got it; and she had consumed it. She
leaned back.
"Very nice of you to arrange these rooms for me, Violet," she said; and
added: "They christened me 'Mac' in this place. But I'm not going to
have any 'Macs' now--except of course when I'm alone with someone, like
this."
"No," said Violet. "It wouldn't do, would it? I should have unpacked
your trunks too; but I thought perhaps I'd better not. People prefer to
do that themselves."
"I've done it," said Miss Maclaren.
"You _are_ quick," said Violet, who was really impressed by this
despatch.
"Oh! That doesn't take me long!" said Miss Maclaren. "I've done it too
often. But hanging pictures and so on. No. I never seem to have a moment
for that. Downstairs my pictures never were hung. And if you hadn't hung
them here, I don't know when they would have been done." Her gaze was
apparently set on one of the vases of flowers. But she said no word
about Violet's flowers. Evidently she was a woman, rare, who could look
at flowers without seeing them.
"And what have you been doing on your first day? I've had to leave you
to yourself." Miss Maclaren laughed.
Violet answered:
"I'd better make my report, hadn't I?"
She told about Sir Henry Savott's urgent demand for a new desk.
"Savott? What number?" Violet gave the number of the suite. "But that
was occupied by a Mr. ---- I forget his name, only it wasn't Savott; a
Canadian."
"Sir Henry came in last night, he told me."
"I'm sure he isn't on the floor-list," said Miss Maclaren. "That must be
her ladyship again. She must have had the slip from the Reception
Office--and forgotten it. Other things to occupy her mind!" Miss
Maclaren both sardonically enjoyed and severely disapproved Mrs.
O'Riordan's negligence. "You see, she was doing floor-housekeeper up
here as well as head-housekeeper. You'd have thought she could manage
it, wouldn't you? Well, what about the desk?" Violet related that a
valet had advised her to go to the carpenter's shop.
"And did you go?"
"No, I sent for the head-carpenter. The valet said there was some spare
furniture in his shop."
"Now that's right," said Miss Maclaren. "Send for them. Never go to them
unless you can't possibly help it."
"Well, there wasn't a desk--at least not one large enough. And Sir Henry
wanted it green. I went to the shop myself to see."
"So you didn't get one?"
"Yes, I did. I don't know whether I did right or not, but I looked in
all the empty rooms and I found a large desk in 847. So I exchanged that
one for the one in Sir Henry's room. Was that right?"
"Yes, it was," said Miss Maclaren. "But the desk in 847 isn't green."
"It has some green lines picked out on it."
"So it has," Miss Maclaren agreed, after reflection. "How did you get
the desks shifted?"
"I just asked the valet if he'd get it done for me, and he did."
"Which valet was it?"
"Don't know his name. Red hair."
"Oh! He _did_?"
"Yes. I think the carpenters helped. I left them to do it and went away.
When I came up from lunch it was done. I was very late for lunch. It
took me about ten minutes to find where the place was. The housekeepers'
table was empty. But there were two page-boys eating in the same room."
"Well, dear, that wasn't so bad for a first day. I don't believe in
page-boys having their meals in the same room as the floor-housekeepers.
I've often thought of it. It's not nice. And I mean to get that altered
if I can. What else? Anything?"
The conversation, vivacious enough, and deeply interesting to both
women, burrowed down into recondite details of administration. Violet
absorbed new knowledge through her pores. She mentioned the illness of
Sir Henry's servant Jim.
"I went to see him. He said he knew he'd got bronchitis, and I thought
he had too. So I sent for Dr. Constam."
"Who told you about Dr. Constam?"
"Marian Tilton. That's her name, isn't it? Mr. Cousin's secretary. I
telephoned down to her. She's very obliging."
"Yes, I suppose she is," Miss Maclaren concurred. "But don't you go and
say too much to her. She's the worst gossip in the hotel. I'm always
very careful with _her_. What did the doctor say?"
"Oh! It was bronchitis. But only a touch."
"He wouldn't have said it was only a touch if it had been a visitor on
any of the floors," observed Miss Maclaren.
"Wouldn't he? But I really think it _was_ only a touch this time, I've
been to see the man since. I knew him, you see, before. I knew Sir Henry
Savott too."
Violet hesitated for a moment, but the hesitation ended by her telling
pretty fully the story of her brief connection with the Savott household
at Claygate. Miss Maclaren listened with both ears, and did not cease to
question until she had learnt more of Susan Powler's illness and death
than anybody outside the Powler family. Intimacy was still further
increased. The very room was warm with intimacy. Tones of voice sank
lower. Inflections and glances and gestures acquired a new freedom and
variety.
"Then you must know a lot about our business," said Miss Maclaren, at
the close of the talk. "I wish I'd known this morning. I shouldn't have
been so nervous for you. Mr. Cousin or Mr. Orcham might have told me, I
think." The head-housekeeper's respect for her subordinate had increased
as much as the intimacy. After all there was a glamour about managing a
large country mansion for a celebrity that even the Imperial Palace
could not offer. Silence fell for a moment.
Violet was thinking:
"I'm glad I told her. She might have heard one day and it wouldn't have
done for her to think I hadn't been open with her. She's a nice old
sort. No trouble about keeping in with her if you go about it right.
She's fussy, but she's a great worker, and she knows her job and she'll
see that I do mine."
Then the telephone-bell tinkled in the room. Miss Maclaren jumped with a
nervous start to answer it.
"Oh, dear!" she murmured, with resignation. "Can't people leave me alone
while I'm having my tea?"
III
In the telephone dialogue, Miss Maclaren said little, listening much
more than she talked. Violet heard only such phrases as: "Oh! Quite
satisfactory, sir. She's... Very well, sir.... To-night? Yes,
to-morrow morning _would_ be better. Certainly, sir. I'll arrange
it.... Oh yes, sir. I can manage." Miss Maclaren hung up the
receiver, sighed, and returned to the sofa.
"I'm sorry, Violet, but the orders are that you are to go down to Third
to-morrow morning, and take over there. It was Mr. Cousin speaking. I do
think it would have been better for you to stay up here with me for a
bit, while you're getting into it. But that's the order. He didn't give
any reason. But I should like to know whether I'm head-housekeeper or
not. It ought to be my business to decide what housekeeper is to be on
what floor. Miss Venables is doing Third and Fourth at present, and she
might just as well go on doing them both, until you're settled down. I
thought we'd settled it all at that lunch of theirs. I told them there
was no need to have eight housekeepers. Waste of money, I told them. I
can easily do Eighth myself, same as Mrs. O'Riordan had to do for a week
and more. But I do wish you could have stayed with me. I'm so sorry,
dear."
"So am I--Mac," Violet replied, using the diminutive with a certain
constraint for the first time.
And she was rather more than sorry. She was upset. These mysterious
powers downstairs! They said go, and you went. No reason given. They
ordered, and you obeyed, blindly. You weren't a human being. You were a
robot. You had to exercise judgment, tact, take responsibilities, be
smart, powder your face. But you were a robot. Supposing she'd been
doing wrong over the desk, as she might have been doing! What trouble!
Taking on herself to change furniture without authority! But she was a
robot nevertheless. Nothing like this could have happened at the
Laundry. Cyril Purkin had been above her, technically, but he was always
a bit timid, apologetic, and full of explanations whenever he encroached
on her territory. Third floor! It was a foreign land to her. It was like
Canada. Fancy having to emigrate to Canada at less than a day's notice.
And she was unpacked and fixed on Eighth! And she felt at home there. To
her, Eighth was the nicest and the cosiest floor in the hotel. No other
floor could be half as nice.
She felt helplessly involved in a terrific and ruthless machine. And why
was she being moved? Why? Miss Maclaren thought there was no sense in
it, and so there couldn't be any sense in it. With Miss Maclaren the
interests of the hotel would have come first. She would have sacrificed
herself and Violet and anybody to the interests of the hotel. That was
certain. You could feel in Miss Maclaren a tremendous loyalty and
devotion to the hotel. Well, if Miss Maclaren couldn't see the point of
the move there just wasn't a point. Surely Mr. Orcham had had nothing to
do with the order. No, it was just a whim of that strange Frenchman.
Already Violet was beginning to catch the head-housekeeper's prejudice
against foreigners.
"Agatha will be here in a minute," said Miss Maclaren, glancing at the
clock. "I must dictate some letters. I'm not very good at it. Did you
have to do any dictating at the Laundry, dear?"
"Oh no! Mr. Purkin did all that."
"He was a bit curt in his letters to Mrs. O'Riordan," said Miss
Maclaren.
"Yes, I daresay," said Violet. "But I don't think he means to be." She
smiled.
And Mac smiled quite suddenly.
"No. I'm sure he doesn't," said she, as if suddenly persuaded to revise
her opinion of Mr. Purkin as a business correspondent. "And talking of
the Laundry," she went on. "The linen will be coming in about seven--you
know when it leaves the Laundry--I wish you'd see that it's checked
_carefully_, and I want you to look right through the linen-closets, and
see if everything's arranged for the best and report to me, will you?"
"I will," said Violet, with enthusiastic, consciously comforting
willingness, conveying the idea that her special delight would be to do
what was asked of her.
"Let me see now," said Miss Maclaren. "This will be your late night.
Midnight, you go off. Have you had any time off to-day?"
"I've had plenty of time when there wasn't anything to do."
"You ought to have gone out," said Miss Maclaren, who seldom took the
trouble to go out herself. "I'd like us to have another quiet chat
to-night. Come along here about half-past eleven. I'll expect you. But
be sure to tell the night-waiter and the valet and the maid where you're
to be found. In case. You never know."
Agatha tapped and entered. Miss Maclaren frowned instinctively,
preparing herself to shoulder again the full burden of the Imperial
Palace.
"You've brought that correspondence I asked you for with the Works
Department?"
"Yes, Miss Maclaren."
Violet dined in the society of Miss Prentiss and Miss Venables. There
were no page-boys. Later she went through the linen-closets. She was
humorously surprised to discover herself highly critical of the laundry
work. She admitted defects which, if they had been brought to her notice
by the hotel staff, she would never have admitted in the Laundry. By
eleven-thirty she was almost reconciled to the emigration order. Mac and
she gossiped till nearly one o'clock in the morning, hedonistically
heedless of the clock. At parting they kissed: a prim kiss. Mac said
that Violet must come up for tea again the next day--not for mere
pleasure, certainly not, but to receive any advice or information which
she might need for the proper conduct of Third.
"Have you packed at all, you poor dear?" Mac enquired.
"No. I shan't think of it till morning."
"That's right. And don't you go down a minute before nine o'clock.
That's your time on Third."
Violet walked slowly through the long narrow corridor, in which all the
lights save three had been extinguished. No sound. No sign of human
existence, except a pair of shoes on doormats here and there. Ghostly.
Weird. Light showed through the half-open door of the waiters'
service-room. A man in a dressing-gown emerged from a room nearly
opposite Violet's, dropped a letter into the letter-shoot, and
disappeared back into his room. And in the strange solitude of her
home-for-one-night, Violet undressed slowly and meditatively. She smiled
to herself. On the whole she was very well pleased with her début.
"What a hell of an exciting day!" she remarked aloud.
CHAPTER XXXV
RETURN TO EIGHTH
I
The next morning Violet, already installed and at work on Third, went
into one of the principal suites there. It was empty, and her business
was to inspect. Third was a territory very different from Eighth. Its
main corridor was broader, more deeply carpeted, more richly decorated,
its ceiling loftier. The corridor alone sufficed to establish in every
heart the conviction that wealth abounded and that no price could be too
high for tranquillity and the perfection of silent and luxurious
service. Even a vacuum-cleaner, at work on the crimson carpet, seemed to
purr like a tiger tamed and domesticated to the uses of the lords of the
earth. And the menials of the staff moving upon humble tasks seemed to
apologise to the invisible lords for their own miserable existence.
The suite was planned similarly to that of Sir Henry Savott on Eighth,
but on a vaster scale: a large entrance-hall, a large bathroom full of
gadgets unknown on Eighth, a huge bedroom on one side and a huge
sitting-room on the other. Brocaded upholstery everywhere, multiplicity
of lamps, multiplicity of cushions, multiplicity of occasional tables;
everywhere a yielding, acquiescent softness.
Everything that the caprice of infinite power might demand; and yet
emptiness, a total absence of individuality, of humanity. A feeling in
the rooms of expectancy, awaiting with everlasting patience the arrival
of life-giving, imperious, exacting lords of the earth. In the bedroom,
twin-beds covered with silk till the lords should come, destined to
receive upon their resilient springs and their pillows the delicate
sensitive bodies of lord and lady fresh perfumed from the bath. Thereon
they would deign to recline, repose, slumber, perhaps snore. Strange
thought!
The blinds were up, the heavy double curtains drawn apart. Violet looked
out of the windows, opened them, saw the trees which obstructed Sir
Henry Savott's view, tested every lamp--there were thirty-seven, tested
every tap, every gadget, pulled down the blinds, pulled the curtains
together, opened every drawer and every cupboard, tried every key and
knob and bolt, passed a hand along ledges to discover dust, bending down
in order to descry dust on glass-tops of tables. And made notes.
A tap in the bathroom which obstinately dripped. In the sitting-room a
lamp whose filament had 'gone.' A curtain-hook which had escaped from
its ring. Flowers required. Small stain on a white linen cover of one of
the pedestals in the bedroom. And a large dark stain on the bedroom
carpet, very noticeable and ugly. Also a drawer unlined with paper in
the chief wardrobe, and only eight coat-hangers in the wardrobe--not
enough. Quite a list! She knew the machinery for remedying every defect
except the stain on the immense carpet in the bedroom. Neither lord nor
lady could hope to be able to sleep peacefully in a bedroom with a
stained carpet. The physical side of the complex enterprise of living
which these lords and ladies had invented was indeed extremely difficult
for themselves and extremely arduous for their attendants. From the
bedroom Violet heard voices in the entrance-hall. An arriving visitor.
She saw through the open door a dapper and diplomatic reception-clerk,
and Sir Henry Savott.
"Yes," Sir Henry was saying. "I'll come back at once to my old rooms.
I've nothing to complain of upstairs, and the outlook is much finer
there; but it's all too small. I find I can't manage. So if you don't
mind I'll come back here this afternoon. About five. Not before."
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Certainly."
"I shall have to leave all the moving to your people, without
superintendence. My man's ill." The two went into the sitting-room, and
Violet heard further the voice of Sir Henry: "Now as regards this desk.
There's a desk in my sitting-room upstairs that I should prefer to this
one. Can it be brought down?"
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Certainly."
"Good."
Then the two came to the bedroom. Violet was a little nervous. She
prepared a discreet smile for Sir Henry. But Sir Henry did not smile. He
merely nodded perfunctorily.
"I want one of these beds taken out. It's only in the way. I had it
removed before, but of course it's been brought back again."
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Naturally."
"Thank you."
The two retreated.
"That will do, thanks. I'll just look round," Violet heard Sir Henry say
to the clerk. After which the entrance-door closed and Sir Henry
reappeared in the bedroom, smiling and friendly.
"So you're down here now, Violet," he said, offering no explanation of
his previous stiff formality.
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"Well, I'm glad I've seen you. I didn't come across you again yesterday,
and I did want to thank you for looking after Jim so well. He's better.
And he was very pleased to see you, very pleased. I went along to have a
look at him this morning."
"Oh yes!" Violet murmured.
"And there was another thing. You succeeded brilliantly in the affair of
the desk, and I was much obliged. Have you got charge here to-day?"
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"Well, that relieves my mind. I know I shall be safe. Good-bye for the
present." And off he hurried.
To Violet it was all very odd. And the stained carpet troubled her. She
went to the corridor service-telephone and was lucky to get Miss
Maclaren in her own room. She wanted counsel from Mac, who at once
reassured her as to the carpet.
"It's a really bad stain?" asked Mac.
"Frightful."
"People _are_ careless. How big is it?"
"About a foot square at least."
"All right. Don't bother. I'll see to it."
"But can it be done before five?"
"Of course. Look under one of the corners of the carpet. Doesn't matter
which. You'll see a tab with a number on it. Give me the number."
Whereupon the neophyte of the Imperial Palace learnt that every carpet
in the Palace had its exact duplicate, in size and shape, at the Works
Department in Craven Street, and that an exchange could be effected in a
couple of hours at most. Violet was impressed by the reckless grandeur
of the domestic machine.
"And I say, Violet," continued Mac. "There's just come up another order.
You are to come back to Eighth this afternoon. I don't know why. But I
expect it's struck them at last that what I said to them about your
being up here with me for a bit was only commonsense. I'm so glad."
"So am I," Violet replied, too astonished and disturbed to respond
adequately to Mac's gladness. Those mysterious powers down below were
more mysterious than ever. To them you were no better than chessmen on a
chessboard. And you had no better right to question them than the
chessmen the chess-players.
II
The tone of sincerity which Miss Maclaren had used in the phrase "I'm so
glad" remained warmly in Violet's mind. It was clear that the
head-housekeeper really did want to make a friend of her. Apparently Mac
had few friends or none on the staff. Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss
had shown reserve in their references to her at lunch on the previous
day. Violet guessed that while they neither liked nor disliked their new
superior they were perhaps preparing themselves to be restive under what
they feared might prove to be a too strict and exacting régime. "Why has
she taken to me?" Violet thought. "There's no contrast between us. We're
much the same." Yet she well knew that they differed in at least one
important aspect. Both of them conscientious and industrious, Mac was
victimised by a tendency to harassed gloom, but Violet was animated by a
tendency to cheerfulness. Violet had a desire always to lift Mac out of
a pit of depression, and she was aware that the satisfaction of the
desire would demand a slightly wearisome continuous moral effort on her
part. She felt sorry for Mac, more sorry for her than fond of her. And
in some strange way she felt sorry also for Sir Henry Savott; felt as
though she ought to remain on Third until he was entirely comfortable
there, until she had assured herself that all his requirements, whatever
they might be, had been fulfilled. She had a personal relation to Sir
Henry, and nobody on the staff could understand his temperament as she
understood it. At bottom, beneath all his imperious demeanour, he was a
bit helpless, was Sir Henry.
Coming out of Sir Henry's suite, she met Mr. Perosi, the head of all the
floor-waiters, the jealous commander of twenty-five or thirty men. A
tall, broad, heavy, grey-haired fellow (French despite his name), whose
weight pressed too hard on his feet, which were generally tired and
sore.
"Excuse me, Mr. Perosi--you are Mr. Perosi, aren't you?" The middle-aged
functionary, stopping, slowly nodded his head and gave Violet the
faintest fatigued sardonic smile. "I don't know a thing yet about
flowers here. And I want some for this suite. What do I do?"
"You telephone down to the flower-shop. You know the flower-shop?"
"Never heard of it."
"It's on the right in the corridor between the hall and the grill-room.
They always have carnations and roses. And if you want any special
flowers for a visitor at any time, you can always get them. A visitor
orders a bouquet of orchids at midnight--well any time after eight
o'clock you telephone to the manager's office. They have a key of the
shop there when it's closed, and whoever is on duty opens the shop and
sends you up orchids--or anything else. Of course in the ordinary way
all flowers are taken out of the sitting-rooms at seven in the morning
every morning, and the vases put into the corridor and they go down to
the flower-shop to be examined. They're back again before nine, changed
or freshened, you see. Bedroom flowers are changed when the visitors
have left their rooms. It is very simple, Miss Powler."
"Oh!" Violet exclaimed eagerly. "You are kind. I was wondering how it
was all arranged. Thanks very much. Sorry to trouble you." She thought,
pleased: "He knows my name." Mr. Perosi's glance became benevolent,
paternal.
"If you want to know anything else, come and ask me. Fourth is the floor
to find me. End of the corridor." He pointed.
"There was something else, but I oughtn't----"
"What?" Perosi was suddenly harsh.
"I hardly like to ask you. But I've decided to try to learn French. I
suppose there are plenty of Frenchmen on your staff, Mr. Perosi. I only
thought----"
"I'm French," said Perosi in his perfect colloquial English. "My father
was born in Milan, but I'm French. So you wish to learn French? That is
good. I will see. Come to me to-night. I will see."
"You _are_ kind. But I'm returning to Eighth this afternoon."
"And then? What does that matter? Telephone to me." He passed on his
way.
"Why don't they like him?" Violet thought, meaning the other
housekeepers. "He's a dear."
A sensation of happiness flowed into her, but it did not quite destroy
the vague unease which had been set up by the incomprehensible order to
go back to Eighth.
CHAPTER XXXVI
MESS LUNCH
I
A very small room, so small that the telephone had to be precariously
perched on the window-sill. Photographs of seductive, acquiescent,
provocative and lightly clad girls on the walls; also two photographs in
a different style, on either side of the long, low window--portraits
respectively of Maître Planquet, chef of the restaurant kitchens, and of
Commendatore Rocco, chef of the grill kitchens. The latter was a new
addition to the walls. An oval table, relatively large, occupied most of
the room. Indeed there was no other furniture except chairs and a small
sideboard well stocked with bottles.
Seated at the table were Adolphe, the rosy-cheeked Reception-manager;
Major Linklater, a tall, thin, retired army-officer whose business it
was to fly about in aeroplanes and meet customers on liners at
Southampton, Cherbourg and Plymouth, and know them and all concerning
them; Immerson, the young, slim Publicity-manager, whose dandyism of
attire rivalled even that of Mr. Dacker and Mr. Smiss (the youthful
members of the Board); Pozzi, the assistant-manager; and Commendatore
Rocco.
The Commendatore, sole member of the staff with an honorific title,
dominated the table. A big man and a grim man, he was dressed
professionally in gleaming stainless white, and had a white cap on his
mighty head. The Commendatore, chief guest of the mess on this great
occasion, spoke little or not at all. When he did speak he used Italian
to Adolphe (who could chatter colloquially in most civilised languages)
and French to the others. His voice was deep, nearly a growl; and his
soul was deeper. Perhaps even he himself had never plumbed his soul
quite to the bottom. He had a sardonic, observant eye. He noticed his
portrait hung on an equality with Maître Planquet's, and made no remark
thereon. But he thought: "And not too soon!" Not that the Commendatore
was jealous of the wider reputation of Maître Planquet! No. He merely
desired due recognition of the fact that Maître Planquet was not the
only chef in the Imperial Palace. The Commendatore was much older than
the Maître. He was a relative of the once-famous Rocco of the Grand
Babylon Hotel, but never mentioned the fact. His career had included
several of the supreme restaurants, and the kitchen of a deceased
Rothschild. He had refused a startlingly munificent offer from New York,
with a memorable aside to a friend: "_Ce sont des barbares, les
New-Yorkais._" He had been a known chef when Maître Planquet was an
infant, and in the privacy of his mind he regarded the Maître as a
promising youngster to whom he could teach a thing or two if he chose
and if the youngster would learn. He had never done anything save cook
or superintend cooking and play "manila," called by the Commendatore
"maniglia," a card-game which he preferred because it could be played by
any number of gamblers from two to five; his principal subordinates took
care to learn it. But now he had yielded to golf, while the world
wondered. A new and very special club in a pliant case was propped
against the wall in a corner of the room, ready for presentation to the
Commendatore.
Such was the mess (a mess without a name), and its guest. Two other
guests had yet to arrive. Mr. Orcham and Mr. Cousin, and two empty
chairs seemed to be growing impatient for their arrival. A couple of
waiters circled restlessly around the table, showing their expertise by
not getting in each other's way. From time to time the Commendatore
growled to them an imperious enquiry, which they respectfully answered.
The Commendatore, beneath his sardonic calm, was somewhat nervous for
the plenary success of the repast which he had composed and supervised
with the nicest, captious attention down below. Cocktails were being
sipped.
At half-past twelve Evelyn entered, smiling. Everybody stood.
"I'm not late," said he. "But I'm not used to these early hours."
The mess-lunch was always at twelve-thirty, partly because that was the
continental hour for lunch, and partly because it fitted in with the
duties of the staff better than the English hour. Evelyn took his seat
at the head of the table, and the others resumed their chairs.
"Where's my friend Cousin?" he asked.
"Coming, sir--we hope," said Major Linklater.
"Damn that hammering," said Evelyn. "I must stop it." He rose.
"That's what we all say," said the Major.
The Imperial Palace was in a continuous state of structural improvement,
and a band of workmen were busy on a roof just below the level of the
window. But before Evelyn could reach the window, the noise ceased as by
magic. Workmen's dinner-hour.
"You have only to rise, sir," laughed Adolphe.
"I'm sure Mr. Cousin won't mind if we start--will he, Pozzi?"
"Certainly not, sir."
The meal began at once.
"Ah!" said Evelyn. "Hot hors d'oeuvre! So you're going on with that idea
of yours, Commendatore. I've not had this one before."
The Commendatore replied:
"My director, no one has had this before. I invent six new ones every
day. Another two days, and it will be a month since I began. That will
make one hundred and eighty-six new combinations. That is work, if I may
dare to say so. I have been reserving this one expressly for to-day." He
ate reflectively, critically, appreciatively, as though listening with
attention to a new poem or piece of concerted music. "Yes, truly it is
not bad. The mushrooms, prepared like this...! It is necessary to
drink sherry with it. As for me, I never touch sherry. But sherry should
go with it."
All the lunchers eagerly lauded the novel dish. Sherry was served.
Evelyn forbade the wine-waiter with a gesture.
"Vittel," he murmured. And aloud to the Commendatore: "We don't get
these in the restaurant."
The glance of the Commendatore signified: "Of course you do not. The
restaurant is only the restaurant, but the grill is the grill." His
growling tongue said: "My director, if once you would come to the
grill----"
"I will. _Demain, sans faute_," Evelyn answered.
"I shall be too honoured, my director. Lunch?"
"Lunch."
"I shall give myself the pleasure of occupying myself with it
specially."
On the rare occasions when he did not lunch privately, Evelyn lunched in
a corner of the restaurant. He realised that he would be well advised to
divide his patronage less unequally.
II
The Commendatore had the same thought, and his tone, though formally
submissive, did not hide the thought and was not meant to hide it. He
glanced as it were stealthily about him. Publicity men, managerial men,
reception men, even the Director himself: what were they? Naught! He,
Rocco, was the sole artist and creator in the room. He alone really
understood. The others, kindly, and clever enough in their way, were
savages. _La haute cuisine._ He dreamed. Golf--not serious, a game, a
diversion. _La haute cuisine._ Not fifty people in the world were
equipped by education and natural taste to comprehend it. Planquet might
comprehend that hors d'oeuvre. Yes, possibly the youngster would
comprehend it. Yes, he must admit that the youngster would. The Director
comprehended wines, cigars. That he knew, though it was almost
incredible that an Englishman should comprehend any wine but champagne.
And even champagne... With their mania for _extra sec_!... It was
time the Director patronised the grill. Not to do so amounted to an
insult. But he, Rocco, was truly too benevolent. He might retire, for in
Italy he would be a rich man. Or he could choose between a dozen high
situations. But after all, the Imperial Palace--there were not two of
_them_! And Rocco was extremely flattered that day. The artist despised,
but the man admired, the _chic_ of his hosts; he in white, they in
black. And golf! Very smart, golf. The entry into society, into the
_beau monde_. He, son of a small rice-grower!
The telephone-bell rang. Pozzi jumped to it and listened; then sat down.
"Mr. Cousin is detained," said he, and after a moment added: "Sir Henry
Savott."
"What about Savott?" Evelyn questioned.
"It is he who is detaining Mr. Cousin."
Evelyn rose and stepped across to the telephone himself.
"Manager's office, please.... That you, Cousin? Orcham speaking. You
have Sir Henry Savott with you. I only wanted to tell you this. There is
no accommodation on Eighth. You understand?... Yes. Right."
Nobody understood what the instruction implied. It made them all think,
uneasily, but agreeably too; the suggestion of a skirmish between the
Director and an important visitor was always exciting. Even Adolphe, who
knew everything about visitors, was at a loss to understand the
instruction. Evelyn sat down again, and in a gay tone immediately
addressed Adolphe:
"Well, Adolphe, how are you getting on with that novel I lent you?"
Evelyn read a large number of books--nobody knew when--and he talked of
what he read. The novel was the latest example of the fashionable
brilliant daring variety, which had been recommended for suppression by
the godly and which not to have read amounted to a social solecism.
"I finished it last night, sir," said Adolphe. "I should call it mild.
The chapter in the underground bakehouse between the girl and the baker
nude down to the waist is not bad, but I'm afraid they wouldn't think
much of its realism in Czecho-Slovakia." Everybody laughed, for
Czecho-Slovakia was one of Adolphe's weaknesses.
"Now don't boast, Adolphe," said Major Linklater. "You aren't a
Czecho-Slovakian. You wish to heaven you were."
"I very nearly was," Adolphe innocently retorted.
"Yes, we've heard that story about a million times," said Major
Linklater. "So spare us, my beamish boy."
"I wish somebody would tell me the meaning of that word 'beamish,'"
Adolphe retorted. "It isn't in the dictionary."
"And it never will be," said the Major. "It would set any dictionary on
fire, and there'd be a smell of sulphur. You have to be English and you
have to have your name put down for it when you're eight years old, and
then perhaps the high-priest will vouchsafe to you its meaning when
you're eighteen. Otherwise you haven't an earthly. Tell us about the
bakehouse scene."
After Adolphe had picturesquely and boldly described the bakehouse
scene, which had been discussed at hundreds of dinner-tables, in and out
of the Imperial Palace, Major Linklater went on, to Evelyn:
"May I have that book, sir, after Adolphe? I should love to know what
Adolphe thinks would be thought mild in Czecho-Slovakia."
"I'll make a present of it to the mess," said Evelyn. "Then you can talk
bawdy and everyone can join in."
"Dr. Johnson," murmured young Dr. Constam.
"Noble sir!" exclaimed Major Linklater. "Gentlemen! The health of the
noble Director."
There was some applause, actual clapping of hands, amid which the next
dish was introduced into the room--a John Dory fish, cooked and sauced
from an absolutely original recipe of the only creative artist present.
"Serve me first," the Commendatore gruffly told the waiter. "I am not
very sure of this dish." He tasted.
"That goes," he growled with relief, and glanced at the Director, who
tasted.
"This is quite new to me," said the Director.
"Yes, my Director," said the Commendatore, grimly triumphant. "And to
the world."
"First time on any stage!" said Major Linklater. "Gentlemen, we drink to
the success of the Commendatore's novelty."
Suddenly, after a lot more benevolent badinage, young Dr. Constam said
in his quiet, cheerful, modest voice:
"I have a piece of really stupendous news."
"Don't hesitate," Evelyn encouraged him.
"Perosi has at last fallen."
"Down the lift-well?" Adolphe surmised.
"For a woman." Dr. Constam looked round as if to say: "Beat that if you
can!"
"What! Old flatfoot?"
"The same. I think his relations with our glittering bevy of
housekeepers have always been very correct. But distant. Oh yes,
distant. Well, I happened to meet him this morning, and it's a positive
fact that he began all on his own talking about the new housekeeper--I
forget her name."
"Didn't know there was a new housekeeper," Major Linklater said.
"No. You're always a month or so behind the times," said Adolphe. "If
the Palace was burnt down you wouldn't hear of it till it'd been
rebuilt. Well, who is she?"
"Her name is Powler," said Evelyn.
"Well," Dr. Constam continued. "As I say, he began talking about her.
Said she was very agreeable and serious. And she wants to learn French,
and he's going to give her lessons himself."
"No bakehouse scenes, I hope." Adolphe laughed.
Young Immerson, sitting next to him, pressed his foot hard on Adolphe's
toe.
"He used to be a schoolmaster," said Evelyn calmly. "Commendatore, tell
me something about this most distinguished sauce, will you?"
All were subtly aware of a certain constraint. And the conversation
faltered and lost its gaiety until after the fish had been removed. Not
a word more as to Perosi, or as to Violet Powler. Then young Pozzi
looked at his watch.
"Your chief doesn't seem to be coming," said Evelyn.
"Doesn't look like it.... Will you make the presentation, sir?"
"Most assuredly not," said Evelyn. "This is a hotel-staff affair. If Mr.
Cousin isn't here, you're his second-in-command, and you must perform
the ceremony."
At which Pozzi, with a graceful timidity which delighted Evelyn, went to
the corner, seized the golf-club and handed it in its case to the
Commendatore with ten halting words in Italian. The Commendatore had to
pretend to be surprised, and the company had to pretend that the great
golfer of the immediate future would be Commendatore Rocco and that the
sequel would play hell with the grill-kitchens and ruin the whole hotel.
"I think I may add one thing," said Evelyn. "Rocco has the ideal
temperament for a good golfer. It's like a rock. Gentlemen, fill your
glasses." They all stood. Even Rocco, disproving Evelyn's statement as
to the rockiness of his temperament, stood, from sheer nervousness.
The ceremony was finished, and the meal finished very quietly
afterwards. Mr. Cousin had failed to appear. Men looked at their
watches. Staff-lunches had to be rapid at the Imperial Palace. Soon all,
except Evelyn and Immerson, had gone--Rocco first, with his magnificent
club, his pride as a creative artist, and his dream of triumph over
eighteen holes.
The two laggards were standing, while Immerson held a gold lighter to
Evelyn's cigarette.
"Can you spare me a minute, sir?" Immerson suggested with his customary
deference.
III
Evelyn nodded. The senior of the waiters had already departed, the other
was in the tiny service-room which adjoined the mess-room. Immerson
happened to be one of Evelyn's young pets, perhaps the chief among them.
He was a quiet fellow who spoke, when he did speak, in a low, restrained
voice. At the luncheon he had said hardly a word. He had been at the
Imperial Palace only three years, and was still a few months under
thirty. He had come out of the blue to see Evelyn. When Evelyn had
enquired what had decided him to leave general advertising in order to
specialise in hotel advertising, he had answered: "My Christian names,
sir. An omen. A signpost." His Christian names by chance were "Frederick
Gordon"--name of one of the pioneers of the modern British hotel world.
When Evelyn had asked him what were his leading ideas about the hotel
business from his point of view he had answered: "It's no use waiting
for business to come in. You have to go out and get it. And you won't
get it by display-ads of the kind you're putting now in London dailies.
Londoners don't use London hotels, except their restaurants, and even if
your restaurant is full your hotel won't pay if your bedrooms are
empty."
Immerson was engaged, on salary plus commission. He stopped all the
Palace's newspaper advertising in London, and was running campaigns in
the provinces and abroad for the inculcation of a theory that London,
the world's centre, was a jolly and bright city, and for depreciating
the attractions of the Riviera and other resorts. He ran also columns of
gossip in many provincial papers, and in these columns the words
"Imperial Palace" constantly appeared, as though by accident. He never
paid for space in a newspaper.
He had seized with enthusiasm upon Evelyn's scheme for establishing an
"Imperial Palace" bureau in New York, and had improved on it by
persuading non-competing luxury hotels throughout Europe and in Egypt to
co-operate in sharing the advantages and the expense thereof. His recent
visit to the United States had been a very brilliant success.
Incidentally, one of its results was to multiply the functions of Major
Linklater, the hotel's official welcomer to England's shores. Evelyn's
final verdict on Immerson was that the young man had more, and more
original and more audacious, imagination than any other person on the
staff. "This boy," Evelyn had said to himself, "must be co-opted to the
Board as soon as Lingmell has the grace to retire--if not sooner."
"Forgive me," Immerson began, leaning against the mess-table. "No doubt
you have noticed the drop in North Atlantic shares these last few days."
North Atlantic was the illustrious Company which owned the fleet of
liners all of whose names ended in "us."
"I have not," Evelyn answered. "Why should I? Because transatlantic
liners are called 'floating hotels'?"
"They fell several shillings yesterday, and they're falling still more
to-day. And to-morrow they'll probably go down with a bump."
"Why?"
"The 'Daily Mercury' is coming out to-morrow with a terrific stunt about
that splitting of one of the decks on the 'Caractacus.' They've been
collecting all the details, and they've found a woman who had her thigh
broken in a lurch of the ship during the voyage. The Company has paid
her handsomely to hold her tongue, but some women can't rely on
themselves to do that." Immerson gave a faint smile. "The 'Daily
Mercury' is bound to lose some steamer advertising, but it doesn't carry
much, and it reckons that what it loses on the swings it will make on
the roundabouts. Anyhow the story'll be a great story. It's quite
possible that traffic will be affected."
"Not for long."
"No. But even a month is too long for us. If traffic's affected we shall
be affected. You see--forgive me for reminding you, sir--the
'Caractacus' is German built, and there are several other German built
ships on the New York services. They'll all be affected, especially as
the 'Caractacus' is laid up for what's called reconditioning. The
'Mercury' will go on the anti-German lay. I've been to the North
Atlantic people this morning and offered them a few hints on how to
react. And I'm going again this afternoon, if you approve, sir. I think
I can get something in one of to-morrow's papers, the 'Echo'--it has a
bigger circulation than even the 'Mercury.'"
"You go right on," said Evelyn. "I leave it to you."
"Thank you, sir. But I haven't come to the point yet."
"Oh?"
"No, sir. From what I hear, our friend Sir Henry Savott is at the bottom
of all this. He's a very large shareholder in North Atlantic, and my
private information is that one reason for the fall in the shares is
that he's been unloading heavily. He'll buy in again when the fall has
reached its limit, and he might make a couple of hundred thousand over
the thing in the end.... No, not that much; but quite a lot."
"Is he a director of North Atlantic?"
"Oh no, sir. If he had been he daren't have done it. No! He's far too
clever to be a director. But I daresay he has a director or two in his
pocket."
"Well," said Evelyn, masking an excusable agitation. "It's all very
interesting--very interesting indeed. When you say that Savott is at the
bottom of it, do you mean he's at the bottom of the 'Mercury' stunt as
well?"
"Nothing would surprise me less, sir," Immerson replied with
characteristic caution.
"I must go now," said Evelyn, not because he was due for another
appointment, but because he wanted to be alone.
"Pardon me for detaining you, sir," Immerson deferentially apologised.
The other waiter returned, and the next moment the two waiters, busy
clearing the table in the room now deserted by their betters, were
freely discussing in French the alluring details of the bakehouse
chapter.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE NEW MILLIONAIRE
I
The next night Evelyn, with time to spare after a busy forenoon and
afternoon of varied diplomatic and administrative toil, was putting on a
dinner-jacket at leisure in his bedroom. He had in his mind a surfeit of
matter for meditation.
Having returned to the Imperial Palace from an excursion as to which
Evelyn knew nothing except that it had included Paris, Sir Henry Savott
had suggested a second interview and had invited him to dinner. Evelyn
had found an excuse for insisting that the meeting should occur in the
same place as the first one, his own dunghill or castle. He would not
give up the advantage of the ground which he had chosen.
Sir Henry's proposal had occupied his thoughts for days. He had
pretended to himself that he had come to no decision, even a tentative
decision, about it. But the pretence was a failure. He had tried, in
vain, to discover good reasons for declining the proposal without any
further discussion. He had talked it over with Dennis Dover, and the
throaty old man had obviously felt the attraction of the offer. It was
an offer which appealed to his imagination, as to Evelyn's. It was a
grandiose, glittering offer. It might have drawbacks, pitfalls, snares;
acceptance of it would necessarily be preceded by a terrific battle of
terms and conditions; but father Dennis had made plain his view that it
ought not to be turned down out of hand. Evelyn agreed; impossible for
him to disagree. The temptations of the offer, to Evelyn, were
tremendous, and the more he reflected upon them, the more tremendous
they seemed and were. Evelyn was like a man who hesitates and fears to
admit that he is in love with a beautiful, dangerous woman; yet well
knows that he is in her power.
Also father Dennis had said: "I can't live for ever. What will happen to
my shares if I die? My grand-nephew will happen to them, because nobody
else can happen to them."
Of course, by the Resolution passed at the Special Meeting and very soon
to be formally ratified, the Board of Directors would still have control
of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company, and could in theory ride over any
shareholder, however large. But in practice it might be difficult to do
so. The moral factor in the situation would count. At best, that
notorious grand-nephew, old Dennis being dead, could not be refused a
seat on the Board; and a director who is the largest shareholder in a
concern can hardly be ignored. Anything might occur; trouble would
assuredly occur. Whereas if the Imperial Palace became merely the
leading item in a vast merger, the incalculable grand-nephew would be
deprived of his paramount importance. There were other pointers to an
acceptance of Sir Henry's proposal, and not the least of them was
Evelyn's secret instinct and inclination growing daily within him.
And then had come young Immerson's tidings, followed by the highly
sensational stunt article in the "Daily Mercury," which had reverberated
throughout London, and was a chief topic of conversation; and North
Atlantic shares had had a fall as sensational as the article, though
later in the day they had risen again somewhat. Could Evelyn, bring
himself to have dealings with the man who, he was convinced, was
primarily responsible for the stunt and the fall. The notion revolted
him. Accustomed to rapid and definitive judgments, he was for once
embarrassed by genuine irresolution. In twenty minutes he would be face
to face with Sir Henry, and he had not decided what attitude to adopt.
His mental discomfort was extreme.
And there was something else, more strange. The affair of Violet Powler.
He had heard--and not by chance--that Savott had moved from the Third to
the Eighth floor. Cousin had told him of the change as a phenomenon
quite extraordinary, inexplicable. Why should a millionaire leave the
rich spaciousness of Third for the small rooms of Eighth. Savott's
specified reasons--the better view and the greater tranquillity--had
appeared to Cousin remarkably insufficient. Evelyn had feigned to regard
them as sufficient and had dismissed the caprice as trifling. But in
fact he had been perturbed by it. Savott had spoken with appreciation of
Violet. Violet had the excellences of her sister. Savott had nearly
married the sister, on his own admission. He knew that Violet was
entering the service of the Imperial Palace. Evelyn had the absurd
suspicion that Savott, having somehow learnt on his arrival that Violet
was to be stationed on Eighth, had gone up there with the intention of
renewing relations with her, of reconsidering her. Yes, an absurd
suspicion. But, entertaining it, Evelyn had deviously arranged that
Violet should descend to Third. Then Savott had returned to Third. The
suspicion ceased to be absurd, and grew into a positive certainty....
And why should not Savott seek to renew relations with Violet? Violet
was well able to take care of herself. Beyond any doubt she was not at
all the sort of young woman to be deceived by even the cleverest
speciousness. As old Perosi had said, she was 'serious.' But Evelyn did
not like the look of the thing. Violet was safe. Savott might be
perfectly honest. He, Evelyn, had no interest in Violet except as, in a
sense, a protégée. He simply did not like the look of the thing. It
annoyed him. It outraged him. He would not allow Savott to play any
games in his hotel. Never! He had control of the situation, and he would
exercise his control.
So he had restored Violet to Eighth, and had instructed Cousin to inform
Savott that there was now no accommodation on Eighth. Not that he knew
that Savott had been suggesting to Cousin a return to Eighth. Cousin had
volunteered nothing about the nature of the interview with Savott. And
Evelyn had not questioned Cousin. Either he was too proud to question
his manager, or he feared to receive an answer which might entirely
demolish his theory of the inwardness of Savott's odd peregrinations. He
would not have Violet on the same floor as her former employer, and he
had no wish to argue the point. The point was decided. Funny! It was all
extremely funny, a lark, a regular game. Evelyn laughed aloud: a harsh,
sinister laugh. He had had an impulse to ask Oldham whether Oldham was
acquainted with Savott's valet. But, again, pride had stopped him.
II
At this very moment Oldham entered the bedroom. The flabby face of the
stoutish, unkempt man was transfigured by some mighty emotion. Evelyn
noticed this, but he ignored it in a sudden determination to let pride
go and question Oldham.
"Do you know Sir Henry Savott's valet?" he demanded at once.
Oldham was dashed, as by an unexpected obstacle.
"Well, sir, I _know_ him. He's been ill."
"Yes. So I heard."
"I don't really know him. As you may see, sir, when I tell you he's
never told me his surname. But we've had one or two chats. He being a
valet, and me too."
"Ever talked to him about our housekeepers?"
"Well, sir, we may have mentioned it."
"He asked you?"
"Now I come to think of it, I believe he did speak about the new
one--Miss Powler. Just in the way of talk."
"Did you tell him anything?"
"No, sir. I couldn't. I didn't know anything, except she'd come from the
Laundry. Seems she used to be with Sir Henry, sir. _He_ told me that.
Else I doubt if I should have remembered it. Yes, and he asked me what
floor she was on, and I told him. Then when I saw him day before
yesterday--was it?--and he was up and about, and Miss Powler had been
moved to Third, he happened to ask me what floor she'd been moved to."
"And you told him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well," said Evelyn stiffly, in a tone somewhat censorious. "I wish you
wouldn't gossip about hotel affairs to visitors' servants." He knew that
the reproach was unfair, but he would not admit to himself that it was
unfair.
"Sorry, sir," Oldham apologised, but with a strange, surprising, defiant
stiffness far surpassing Evelyn's stiffness.
"That's all. What do you want? I didn't ring."
"No, sir. The fact is I've just heard something, and I thought you might
like to know. Sorry if it's inconvenient." Oldham was wounded. He made a
move to retire.
"What is it?"
"Well, sir. It's like this. I've won that thousand pounds. I've had a
letter this minute."
"What thousand pounds?"
"Football Results Competition, sir. It'll be in next Sunday's paper. I
have to call and see them myself to get the cheque. And they want me to
be photographed."
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn with a charming sympathetic smile.
"It's the best piece of news I've heard for a long time."
"Thank you, sir," said Oldham, quickly mollified, but still sturdily--as
man to man, not as valet to master.
Evelyn had lied. It was not the best piece of news he had heard for a
long time; it was the worst. He divined instantly that he would lose
Oldham. He was overset by a feeling that Oldham was necessary to him,
that existence without Oldham would be impossible. A marvellous, an
incredible thing had happened in the life of Oldham. The man was
vibrating with heavenly joy. Evelyn, as his friend, ought to have shared
the joy. He did not. He hardly made an attempt to enter into Oldham's
unique sensations. He even resented Oldham's astounding luck simply
because one consequence of the luck meant that he, Evelyn, would be for
a period incommoded.
"So I expect you'll be leaving?" he said, and waited for the reply as
for the death-sentence from a judge.
"I won't leave you till it suits you, sir," Oldham replied. "Certainly
not. You've always been very kind to me, sir, and I'd like to be----" He
stopped, realising that for a valet, even a wealthy valet, to offer to
be very kind to his employer would be a too daring sin against
established convention.
Yes, the fellow would leave. He had evidently decided to leave. It would
be nothing to him to break the lien that had bound him and his master
together in daily, intimate habit and intercourse. Servants were all
alike, incapable of gratitude. And they were all children. Now you would
have taken Oldham for a sensible man. But was he? How could he be, if a
thousand pounds was enough to induce him to abandon a secure livelihood?
The truth was that when a sum of money passed a certain figure servants
ceased to be able to estimate its value. As Central African natives
could not count beyond ten, so 'they' could not count beyond, say, a
hundred or a couple of hundred. To Oldham a thousand pounds was as good
as a million, as good as ten millions; it was infinity--and therefore
inexhaustible. And Oldham was drunk with bliss.
"That's very good of you, Oldham," said Evelyn. "But of course you must
tell me when. Got any plans?"
"Well, sir, I was thinking I might do worse than buy a little
tobacconist's business. You see them advertised. I saw one the other day
on sale for two hundred pounds cash. Camberwell. Camberwell's a very
nice part, don't you think so, sir?"
"Yes, I think it is."
The usual thing. Tobacconist's business! Why a tobacconist's business?
Did Oldham know anything about tobacco, and buying and selling, and
dealing with customers, and so on and so on? He did not. He just
pictured himself standing behind a counter and smoking a cigarette or a
pipe or even a cigar, and handing out packets of cigarettes and matches
and pipes and an occasional cigar, and raking in money all the time and
chatting in a worldly, benevolent, easy fashion with customers. The
ideal life for the Oldhams of the earth! Simpletons! Fools! Blasted
fools! Within a year the man's capital would be halved. Within two years
he wouldn't have a cent. He would be on the streets, seeking a situation
in the cushiony sort of job that he was now so idiotically preparing to
quit! Could you believe it of a man such as Oldham? Well, you could. It
was exactly what you ought to expect.
"Excellent!" said Evelyn, amiably and without conviction. "But be
careful how you buy. You'd better consult me before you do anything. Or
better still, talk to someone down in the Audit office. You'd need an
expert to go into the figures. I've heard some funny tales about this
business-buying business. There are swindlers who make a regular trade
of it."
"Oh!" said Oldham, magnificently self-confident in his opulence. "I
shall be careful. I think I may say you know me, sir. But I'm much
obliged to you, sir, and when the time comes I shall ask your advice."
Nincompoop! Noodle! _Folie des grandeurs!_
Then Evelyn softened, little by little. The man was entitled to his own
life. He was entitled to leave if it suited him to leave. And as for the
gratitude which masters are continually expecting, and not receiving,
from their servants--what about Evelyn's gratitude due to Oldham for
efficient and faithful service during years and years? Did Evelyn feel
it? He did not. He felt resentment. He strove to conquer his resentment,
and to some small extent he succeeded. After all, Oldham was not a
thief, nor a slacker, nor incompetent. He was a fortunate man, thanks to
his encyclopædic knowledge of form in Association Football. Evelyn
dismissed him with a gentle pat on the shoulder, which delighted Oldham
and confirmed him in his new creed that all men are equal. Evelyn
smiled, but far down beneath the smile he was extremely perturbed and
pessimistic. He cursed these newspapers which would increase their
already vast circulations by appealing to the gambling instincts of the
populace.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
FALSE REPRIEVE
I
"You taught me something that honestly I didn't know about cigars," said
Sir Henry at a quarter to ten that evening, as he lit one of Evelyn's
cigars after the second dinner in Evelyn's fortress. He added, looking
meditatively at the bright end of the cigar: "But I'm certain to forget.
I always light a cigar about five times. It's a habit, and I shall never
get over it." He laughed carelessly.
"You didn't forget last time, once I'd made my protest," said Evelyn.
"Didn't I?" Sir Henry's tone indicated that really he couldn't recall
what he had done or not done, and that anyhow the matter, to him, had no
importance.
Gracie had remarked to Evelyn that while her father was a great man, he
had the weakness of acting the great man. But during the dinner the
great man had indulged in no histrionics. He had talked simply,
unaffectedly, about the lighter side of his short stay in Paris, spoken
of Gracie, and of the two Cheddar brothers, one of whom was also in
Paris, of the big spectacular revues there specialising in naked women,
and of his own inability to 'follow' a French play.
But now Evelyn's critical faculty pounced upon Sir Henry's demeanour in
the cigar incident as probably a proof that Gracie had been right. He
decided that what Sir Henry had really said was: "I am a great man, a
unique man, and if I choose to relight a cigar, it's correct because I
do it. I can afford to treat a cigar as I please, and I shan't risk any
prestige by my oddness. I'm Sir Henry Savott, I am." And Evelyn in his
heart rather condescended towards the conscious performer in Sir Henry.
Still, the millionaire had again proved himself an agreeable and
diverting companion, sometimes charmingly ingenuous, and rarely coarse.
He had said not a single word as to the proposed hotel-merger: to
Evelyn's relief. For until the end of the meal the coveted panjandrum of
the coveted Imperial Palace had not fully regained his self-possession.
But now the would-be retail tobacconist had quitted the sitting-room for
the last time, and with such a perfect affectionate deference in his
final murmur to the master that Evelyn had reinstated him in esteem and
liking, and the waking nightmare was dissolved, its obsession vanished
away, and Evelyn's sense of proportion restored. He was in a proper
condition to face the great man with assurance, and use wile against
wile. As before, the great man would have to begin.
The great man did begin, on a topic which both he and his host had so
far avoided. The first phenomenon was a smile, followed by a hardly
audible laugh. Evelyn glanced at him interrogatively.
"I was just thinking about the 'Caractacus' fireworks in the 'Mercury'
this morning. I suppose you saw it?"
"Yes," said Evelyn drily. "It was what they call 'brought to my notice.'
I also saw the North Atlantic reply this afternoon in the 'Echo.' What
they said about the split being caused by structural alterations of
their own to make room for extra lifts was rather effective, I thought.
It gives their architect away, but it sounds true, and if it's true it
does save the reputation of the ship as originally built."
"The reply was very clever," said Sir Henry.
"Yes," thought Evelyn, "and if I told you it had been put together by
one of the fellows on my staff here you might be a bit startled."
"Only," Sir Henry went on, "it came out about two hours too late. The
North Atlantic market had gone to pieces before noon. The shares
recovered a trifle this afternoon, but not much. They've had a
tousling."
He rose, and walked slowly to and fro in the warm, curtained room; then
stood with his back against the damask draperies of the window, and at
that distance from Evelyn grew confidential:
"The 'Mercury' people came to see me about the thing last week. They
wanted my evidence. I refused to tell them anything, naturally. But of
course I had to be careful. If I'd shut my mouth absolutely they'd have
used that to support their story, me being a very large holder of North
Atlantics. So I pretended to be very open--and didn't give away anything
that isn't known to at least five hundred people. You know, the comfort
of those crack hell-for-leather liners is one of the most ridiculous
legends ever invented by our reptile press. When I say 'reptile' I'm
saying it in a Parliamentary sense. The papers aren't bribed. They don't
keep the legend alive for money. The biggest steamer advertisement is
nothing to a big daily. No. They keep it alive because it sounds so
nice. Good copy. Symbol of luxury, and everybody wants to read about
luxury. But even in good weather those rushers positively _shake_ half
the time. It isn't a mere vibration. It's like having electric massage
all day, including at meals. And in bad weather they're no better than
12,000 tonners. Not as good. Some of 'em roll till sometimes the only
way to keep yourself upright is to lie flat on the deck. They're liable
to throw piles of plates across the dining-saloon, and chuck you all
over your cabin. They drop from under you until you think your stomach's
above your head. I mean in bad weather. The food isn't too awful,
considering they have to serve five or six hundred people at once. But
nobody can feed five or six hundred at once on _really_ good food. It
can't be done. And the prices are insane. I paid £1,000 for my suite
last time I came over. And there was a bigger ass than me on board. He
paid thirteen hundred. And the tips! All for 27½ knots! Well, I prefer
18 or 19 knots. I'll never do it again."
A pause. Evelyn said:
"On New Year's Eve here I shall serve a thousand people at once, and the
food will be not too awful. It'll be the best there is."
"Ah!" murmured Sir Henry. "But you are you."
"You try it--on New Year's Eve."
"I will," said Sir Henry. "I'll make a point of trying it." He returned
to his chair, smoking his cigar with conscious restraint.
"I don't mind telling you," he continued in a lower tone, dreamy. "As
soon as the 'Mercury' people had been to see me I began to sell my North
Atlantics. I sold a big packet, and I kept on selling 'em."
"And now you'll buy back," said Evelyn sardonically.
"And now I shall buy back," Sir Henry agreed. "I bought a lot this
morning at rock-bottom, and a lot more this afternoon a bit higher, and
I'm ready for more to-morrow. I shall clear quite a lump of money on the
'Mercury' stunt. Well, one must live.... And why not?"
Evelyn repeated in his mind: "And why not?"
The fact was that Savott had 'dropped from under' Evelyn's feet. The
great man had been perfectly open. He had frankly confessed. No!
'Confess' was the wrong word. There had been nothing to confess.
Confession implied sin. The great man had not sinned. He had behaved as
any speculative investor would behave. He had not broken the code. The
code was intact. It might be, as Immerson had suggested, that he was at
the bottom of the "Mercury" stunt. But that was a supposition and could
never be proved. And even if he had been at the bottom of it, what then?
He had not departed from the truth. The details were indisputable. The
deck had split. Indeed, by smashing the agelong Fleet Street sentimental
conspiracy of hush-hush about Atlantic liners, the great man, assuming
what might be termed his guilt, had done good. Evelyn hated any policy
of hush-hush in anything. And yet he was of pure English blood: that is
to say, he had in him, so far as he knew, no tincture of Scottish,
Irish, Welsh, French, German, Italian, American nor Jewish.
II
"By the way," said Sir Henry. "I had a long talk with your man Cousin
yesterday. In the end I asked him to lunch."
"What's he going to say now?" Evelyn thought. Having been twice down to
Weybridge and once to the Laundry and attended a long Board meeting, he
had not seen Cousin for more than a couple of minutes in the two days,
and he knew nothing of the nature of the interview which had prevented
Cousin from attending the luncheon given to the Commendatore.
Sir Henry proceeded:
"I heard by accident that Cousin had been connected with the Concorde in
Paris and the Minerva at Cannes----"
"Yes, he was manager of the Minerva for a time," Evelyn interjected.
"So he said. Well, as both the Concorde and the Minerva are included in
my proposed team, it struck me it might be useful to get some
independent views about them. So I did."
"I hope you were satisfied," said Evelyn, and thought: "Here I go again!
Wrong again! I imagined he was manoeuvring with Cousin to get back to
Eighth. And he wasn't at all. This suspiciousness is growing on me. If I
let it, I shall soon be as suspicious as a millionaire."
"On the whole," Sir Henry replied, "I was very well satisfied with the
look of things. You don't mind me talking to him, do you?"
"Certainly not," said Evelyn. "Why shouldn't you?"
"I needn't tell you I didn't ask him anything about _this_ place. No."
Evelyn thought: "It would have been just the same if you had." He said
nothing.
Sir Henry was restless. He sat back; then demanded suddenly:
"Well, what's your decision about my proposal, Orcham?"
There it was at last! The question, unexpected at that moment, hit him
like a stone.
"Decision?" He repeated the word hesitatingly. "Why! I don't even know
what the proposal is yet. You don't expect me to say Yes or No to a mere
idea, do you?" He gazed fairly at the father of Gracie, classing him as
a wild, impulsive creature, for all his astuteness. Was that the way the
princes of finance allowed their minds to skip from hilltop to hilltop
across the landscape? Something the matter with him! He peered more
boldly into Sir Henry's little, shrewd eyes, striving as it were to
pierce through them into the crafty brain behind; but striving vainly.
He could not even define the general expression on the man's face. It
seemed a candid expression. But was it? The ruthless teeth were hidden
as Sir Henry pursed his lips.
"You misunderstand me," said the financier with a smile quite gentle.
"All I meant was: Have you decided to examine my proposition? Or not. If
not, I won't trouble you any further. If yes, I'll put the entire scheme
before you within the next day or two. All the figures and calculations.
And a definite offer as to price for Imperial Palace shares, and also of
course as to the terms of the contract with you personally."
Having said this, he faintly hummed a fragment of Auld Lang Syne,
evidently inspired by Evelyn's reference to the New Year's Eve banquet,
and inspected the burning stump of his cigar.
Evelyn had the sensation of having been reprieved; from a sentence
passed not by the financier but by himself. But he knew that the
sensation was false. There was no real reprieve. He knew that a decision
to examine the proposition was the equivalent of a decision to sell the
Imperial Palace to Savott's merger. Once the two parties began to
bargain, an agreement would be ultimately certain. Nothing could stop
it. Savott had a powerful supporter; that supporter was Evelyn himself.
Evelyn could not seriously resist the glittering temptation which Savott
dangled in front of him. One Evelyn did indeed resist, but another
Evelyn was entranced by the resplendency of the promise of the future,
and the first Evelyn could not for long resist unaided. It seemed to the
composite Evelyn that he shut his eyes and jumped from a great height.
"Of course," he said, in an even tone. "Of course we shall be charmed to
_examine_ the proposal. Let us know when you're ready." He felt relieved
now: a man who knows the worst.
"Good! I will," said Sir Henry cheerfully, showing his perfect teeth.
And Evelyn was whispering to himself: "My God! My God! If anyone had
foretold this to me a month ago I should have----My God! My God!" A fuse
had been lighted before dinner and it had gone on slowly and silently
burning during dinner and after dinner, and now--the sudden explosion!
"I say," said Sir Henry. "There was one thing I wanted to mention to
you. Nothing to do with this. About that girl Violet Powler."
"Yes?" Evelyn muttered, alert and hostile.
"You've only got to say no, and you can forget I've spoken. I'll forget
too. I'm buying a new house. I shall want a housekeeper. Don't shoot me,
I know she's in your employ, and to lose her might be rather
inconvenient for you. I admit she's one in a thousand. But I knew her
first. And she knows me. Now would you mind if I made her an offer of
the job of housekeeper at my new house? I won't breathe it if you
object. And in any case I wouldn't try to over-persuade her. No! I'd
say: 'There it is, miss. Take it or leave it.' You see I'm being quite
open. Perhaps I'm asking too much. Perhaps it isn't fair. I just mention
it--that's all." Savott's face was the very mirror of candour and
goodwill. This Savott could surely not be the cunning coarse Savott with
whom and his daughter Evelyn had dined one night in the restaurant.
"My dear fellow," Evelyn exclaimed. "Naturally you must ask her. I
wouldn't dream of standing in the girl's way."
A little later the two men parted, all smiles and handclasps and cordial
friendliness. They might have been sworn brothers.
"Delightful castle!" said Sir Henry, quietly enthusiastic, glancing
round the room. "I love it. And once more--you're really very kind. I
appreciate it. Good night."
III
Evelyn put out the lamps in the castle; and in the light of the low fire
and of the corridor lamp through the wide-open doors two glasses on the
table glinted mysteriously. He shut the inner door on the hot interior
wherein as it seemed to him a decisive and intimidating event had
occurred. This event filled his mind, but the ether of the thought of it
was suffused with the ether of the thought of Savott's intentions
towards Violet Powler. Evelyn had to descend to his office, and in doing
so he made one of his periodical peregrinations of the hotel, walking
slowly along corridors and down flights of stairs, eschewing lifts.
He saw his hotel now with a different vision, as though he had left it
and come back and found it a strange land and himself a stranger in it.
If he had not laughed at his own feeling he might have fallen from
sentiment into sentimentality.
He had covered about a quarter of a mile of carpet, and glanced at
scores of baffling numbered doors, and seen no sign of life in the
nocturnal coma of the place except the swift ascent of an illuminated
lift behind a steel grille, and had reached the fourth floor, when a
trifling event happened such as can happen only in the multiple
existence of a large hotel. He heard a door open behind him and a low
shriek. He turned and saw a young, dark woman, a white bath-towel
wrapped around her body, which was dripping with water.
"Fire!" she breathed, scarcely audible, hoarse in her terror.
He stepped very quickly in front of her through the doorway. Instantly
he had passed from out of the vast, vague anonymity of the hotel into an
inhabited, circumscribed home. Garments flung and hung on a hatstand; a
short umbrella on the floor. Before him, the open door of a bathroom
full of steam, and bright in the steam a great blaze arising from the
glass-topped table which stood in the same spot in every bathroom. The
flame, a couple of feet high, waved in a draught set up between the open
window of the bathroom and the open door of the suite. The origin of the
conflagration was a spirit-lamp, and its fuel a newspaper or several
newspapers.
He seized the spirit-lamp, very hot to the touch, and flung it with a
single movement into the bath, which was half full of steaming soapy
water. It sizzled for a fraction of a second and sank into the depths.
Then he snatched at a face-towel and crushed the burning newspaper to
extinction. A moment, and the danger was over. There never had been any
danger, for the paper would have burnt itself out harmlessly on the
glass of the table.
"All right now," he said with the calm of a consciously superior being,
to the young woman who was cowering in the lobby as if to hide her
bodily shame.
But Evelyn had no mercy on her bodily shame. Young women careless enough
to let spirit-lamps ignite newspapers must accept all the consequences
of their silly acts. This one was a beautiful thing, scarcely emerged
from girlhood. (He must find out about her.) The ample bath-towel hung
precariously on her, reminding him of the tantalising cover-designs of
certain French, German and American illustrated weeklies in which the
pose of a woman in an entirely inadequate garment has been caught at the
very instant when the flimsy attire is giving way under strain to reveal
that which ought not to be revealed. An instant later, and the last poor
remnant of decency would be gone.
In a few seconds this very young woman had somewhat accustomed herself
to the immodesty of her predicament.
"I was having a hot bath," she weakly murmured.
"So I see."
"And I got out to open the window because I was afraid I might
faint----"
"You aren't all alone in here?" Evelyn questioned.
"No. My husband is there. But he's asleep and nothing would ever waken
him."
Her husband! What was she doing with a husband at her age? Something
shocking about it. Some fat man old enough to be her father, no doubt.
Always in the Imperial Palace there were such couples, respectable and
disgusting.
"Well, don't take cold," Evelyn advised the wife curtly, and quitted the
excessive intimacy of the lobby for the somnolent desert of the
corridor, shutting the door behind him. She had offered no thanks. He
had given her no chance to express gratitude.
Perosi was padding as fast as he could towards him.
"I thought I heard a scream, sir," said the ageing big man, alarmed and
rather breathless.
"You did. But you've got very good ears. It's all over. Spirit-lamp in
the bathroom in 415. I've put it right. Hysterical woman. The usual
thing. Who are they?"
"I can't remember the name exactly. It's a queer name. The lady seems to
be English. But the gentleman is a Roumanian."
"He would be," thought Evelyn, and said aloud: "Well, you needn't
trouble any more. I've seen to it."
"Thank you, sir." Perosi, tranquillised, faced about to return to his
cubicle-office at the end of the corridor. Then Evelyn saw Violet Powler
standing hesitant at the door of Perosi's cubicle. She saw Evelyn, but
did not move. Perosi faced about again.
"I wish to tell you, sir," said he to Evelyn. "I'm giving lessons in
French to Miss Powler. She is very anxious to learn. I told Dr. Constam
yesterday morning and Mr. Pozzi this afternoon. There's no secret about
it. I hope you approve, sir."
"Of course, Perosi. By the way, I want a word with Miss Powler. Miss
Powler!"... He called aloud. And to Perosi: "Thank you, Perosi."
The old stickler for propriety, the upholder of the full strictness of
the hotel code, the watcher of reputations and prerogatives, especially
his own, having put himself right with the panjandrum, bowed and
shuffled away towards his little room, while Violet Powler obediently
came forward, and Evelyn waited for her in the deep silence of the long
corridor bordered on both sides by withdrawn homes of a night.
In the light falling on her from above Evelyn noticed for the first time
that her cheek-bones were set just a trifle higher than the average. Her
head was certainly broader than the average. Her eyes, far apart, almost
exactly matched her hair in colour. True, her lips were rather thin, but
then her mouth was wide--a sign of benevolence. She walked well; no
trace of anxiety, diffidence, self-consciousness in her gait. Was she
distinguished, or did he imagine it? He had once by chance seen her
mother, an ordinary, somewhat plaintive woman of the lower middle-class.
Could the daughter of such a woman have distinction? Improbable. She was
a puzzle to him. She showed no curiosity as to the cause of Perosi's
alarm. For her, evidently, that affair was finished and therefore had no
further interest. Confident, yet modest. Reserved, yet curiously candid.
Anyhow, though she was a newcomer in the world of the Imperial Palace,
two important men were already competing for her, fighting for her:
Savott and himself. He realised that, and in one part of his mind was
amused at the thought.
"Yes, sir?"
An expression on her face of impartial but benevolent
consideration--ready to deal with whatever question he might confront
her with.
"I hear you're learning French," he said. "It's a very good idea. And
you haven't lost time over beginning."
If she was taking her lesson, this must be her evening off--from nine
o'clock. Therefore she must have been on duty at 6.30 a.m. The hour was
now getting late, but she seemed quite fresh, and her make-up could not
have been more than an hour old. He observed the nice finish of her
finger-nails, for she had clasped her hands in front of her at the level
of her waist.
She smiled faintly, and said nothing, only lifting her head half an inch
or so.
"This will save me the trouble of sending for you. I had something I
wanted to tell you." The benevolence of his tone equalled the
benevolence of her look.
"Yes, sir?"
"I've been seeing Sir Henry Savott to-night. Sir Henry has bought or is
just buying a new house, and he asked me whether I should object if he
offered you the post of housekeeper. He said of course you'd worked for
him already--before you worked for us. I said I shouldn't dream of
standing in your way. You're absolutely free. Under your contract we can
give you notice and you can give us notice. A month, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes. A month. Well, that's how it stands. I thought I would let you
know--in fact _ought_ to let you know--what you may expect, and that
you're under no sort of obligation to me, to us, beyond the terms of
your contract. If we thought we ought to dismiss you, naturally we
should dismiss you. Not that we've the least notion of doing that. Far
from it. But we should feel ourselves at liberty to do it. And just the
same you're at liberty to dismiss us." He smiled broadly at the last
words, and Violet smiled too.
She answered:
"Thank you, sir. It's a thing that will need a lot of thinking over."
"Yes. Good night." Evelyn turned briskly to go back along the corridor
the way he had come.
"Good night, sir."
"And no doubt now she'll proceed with her French lesson, as if nothing
had happened!" he thought.
IV
He was shocked. He was hurt. Had he not been behaving to her in a style
marvellously magnanimous? Had he not been exhibiting the very ideal and
perfection of human justice? Had he not been pluming himself on a
superfine and needless generosity. Most employers, if not all other
employers, though some of them might have accorded the formal permission
to Savott to approach the employee, would have sung a different tune to
the employee herself. They would have said: "We don't expect you to
leave us like this. You've just come. We've taken you into the first
hotel in the world. You ought to regard yourself as extremely fortunate.
We can't have our staff playing fast and loose. Sir Henry Savott ought
never to have made such an extraordinary suggestion. Now he has made it
we look to you to realise that you have a moral duty to us, and we
hope----" etc., etc. But he, Evelyn, had been incredibly benign. And
what does the girl say in reply to his benignity? "It's a thing that
will need a lot of thinking over." And walks off. Yes, he was hurt. He
was very disappointed in his pet housekeeper, his discovery, his
protégée.
But there was the other man in Evelyn, the man who gloried in the
godlike judicial quality of his mind. This man said: "I must be fair.
She had something to hire out, and I hired it. In hiring her I didn't
confer a favour on her. I hired her, not for her advantage, but for the
advantage of the Palace. If I hadn't thought she would be a splendid
asset to the Palace I should have left her where she was at the Laundry.
The change may be a grand thing for her, but that wasn't why I engaged
her. The notion of a moral duty on her part is simply preposterous. It
makes me think of the sickening attitude people take up to their
servants in private houses. The girl's absolutely entitled to give the
question 'a lot of thinking over,' and to decide solely in her own
interests, and to ignore my interests. Savott could certainly pay her a
much better salary than we could, and in his house she wouldn't have
anybody over her--except him. And he wouldn't worry her. No chain of
responsibility there. The truth is she'd be an idiot not to jump at
Savott's offer."
Nevertheless, he was hurt. And would the affair end with
housekeepership? Might it not.... She was Susan's sister.... Well,
and why should it end with housekeepership?
Evelyn descended to his office depressed. He lit a cigar and tried to
find his whereabouts in the confusing darkness of circumstance. If the
hotel-merger came to fruition, he would be in the plight of a man with
one darling child who marries into a numerous family of very
miscellaneous children. He was about to lose his domestic prop, Oldham.
And probably he was about to lose the pearl of housekeepers. Of course
it didn't matter, really. Yet it mattered, somehow. Still, there was one
gleam: she had refused Savott once when she was at the Laundry.
CHAPTER XXXIX
HOUSEKEEPERS
I
When Violet returned to her room on Eighth she found an unstamped letter
conspicuously placed on the desk. The envelope bore at the back the
words, "Imperial Palace." Hence the missive must be from somebody within
the hotel. The handwriting of the address seemed not unfamiliar. Thus
she reflected before opening the letter. It was quite a long letter:
both sides of a large single sheet of notepaper. Of course she looked
first at the signature: "Hy. Savott." The letter began: "Dear Miss
Powler," and contained an offer of a situation as housekeeper of a
shortly-to-be-acquired house in Mayfair. The salary suggested was large.
The writer said that he had obtained the permission of Mr. Evelyn Orcham
to approach her about the matter. The tone of the letter was urbane,
friendly, faultless: tone of an equal, not of a superior.
She felt flattered. Mr. Orcham's original statement had extremely
surprised her, and the letter intensified her surprise. Yet within her
was a sensation of calm self-confidence which diminished her surprise.
After all was she not, with her proved and admitted efficiency (which no
false modesty inclined her to doubt), a fine proposition for any wealthy
householder? She had done the job satisfactorily years ago, and she knew
herself capable of doing it again satisfactorily.
As for leaving the Imperial Palace so soon after entering it, Mr.
Orcham's own fair words had reassured her on that point. The hotel had
the right to safeguard its interests, and similarly she had the right to
safeguard hers. Moreover, she was hardly satisfied with the post of
floor-housekeeper. Though the hours were very long, and Violet missed
the old freedom of her evenings, there was not enough work to do, and
the work lacked responsibility, made insufficient demands on her powers.
And she had been somewhat offended by the apparently causeless shifting
from floor to floor. She could not take exception to it; nevertheless it
had offended her. On the whole Sir Henry's offer tempted her. And how
quiet he had been in making it! Just like him! Deliberately she withheld
herself from coming to a decision, even to a provisional decision. She
glanced at her watch, slipped the letter into a drawer and locked the
drawer, and left the room. She had a rendezvous with Mac.
The moment she put her head into Mac's room she became aware of some
disturbance in the social atmosphere--unseen lightning which played
under the ceiling, unheard thunder in the distance of the corners. Three
prim, tense, constrained black-frocked figures were there: Miss Maclaren
sitting on the sofa; Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss standing, one on
the hearthrug, the other near the desk.
"Oh! Sorry! I didn't----" Violet murmured, and was withdrawing when Miss
Maclaren stopped her.
"Come in, dear. Come in, _please_!" Mac implored her; and Mac's Scotch
accent was much more marked than usual.
Violet obeyed and shut the door. Now there were four black-frocked
figures in the room, figures of women who seemed to be up and about at
all hours of the late night and of the early morning, who existed in and
solely for the Imperial Palace, breathed the Palace, ate and drank the
Palace, and who had learnt the art of dispensing with sleep. Violet
thought that she was different from the other three, but already she was
less different from them than she thought.
"Venables thinks she's overworked here," said Mac.
"Yes, I do," said Miss Venables.
She was a woman of thirty-six or seven, dark, plump, of average height;
neat enough, but a bit careless about her complexion. She had a thin
gold chain round her thick neck. Her hair was plastered down, rather
like a young man's. Her body, while not actually trembling, appeared to
be mysteriously moving beneath her dress. Her large hands were clasped
in front of her, her head was slightly raised, thrown back, and turned
to one side: a characteristic attitude with her when in a state of
emotion. Violet had a habit of clasping her hands. They were clasped
now; but as soon as she noticed Miss Venables' hands she unclasped her
own, saying to herself that she must lose that housekeeper's trick.
"What do you think, Violet?" asked Mac. "What's your opinion?"
But before Violet could reply Miss Venables went on in her carefully
cultivated voice:
"At least I don't say I'm overworked--so long as I'm left alone to do my
work as I've always done it. I don't even mind doing both Third and
Fourth for a time, to oblige the _management_. I always gave
satisfaction to Mrs. O'Riordan, and she wasn't easy to please either."
Violet kept quiet. She had come to a conclusion about Miss Venables in
the first three days. Miss Venables hid a fundamental commonness beneath
that tone of fine manners which she had deliberately acquired and which
ruffled Violet by its pretence. She was a worker; she was conscientious;
but she happened to be afflicted by a sense of her perfection so strong
that any criticism, even an implied criticism, offended her. And she was
continuously on the watch for the slightest implication of the slightest
criticism.
"Well," said Miss Prentiss. "_I_ think we're overworked, and I don't
care who knows it."
Older than her companion in revolt, Miss Prentiss, tall, erect, gaunt as
a telegraph-pole, and with as much human juice in her as a
telegraph-pole, was capable of being very sweet in response to
sweetness, but she was never more than aridly sweet. Violet had come to
a conclusion about Miss Prentiss also. Miss Prentiss, not a bad worker
if in the vein, was a secretive woman with a taste for scandal arising
from suppressed sex-instinct. An accomplished mistress of the dark hint,
she could talk faster than any woman in Violet's experience (which was
considerable). On the other hand she had a sustained power of
taciturnity when silence suited her. Violet thought that both she and
Miss Venables were quite decent creatures. Of the two Miss Prentiss had
the better style, a style better also than Mac's.
"Well, what do you say, Violet?"
"I think our hours are long," Violet at last answered. "But I shouldn't
say we were overworked."
"Oh! Wouldn't you!" Miss Venables exclaimed. "Well, wait till you've
been here a bit longer. You forget that we've all been trying to help
you, Miss Powler--Mac particularly. You're such _great_ friends. But you
wait till you've been here a bit longer."
"Yes." Miss Prentiss turned on Violet. "You've got friends here. Mr.
Orcham brought you. Don't think we don't know all about it."
"Mr. Orcham isn't a friend of mine," said Violet warmly. "I scarcely
know him. He asked me to come here and I came."
"Yes," said Miss Prentiss. "And I suppose he didn't take you down to the
basement and show you everything there himself."
"But _I_ told you that," said Violet.
"It doesn't matter who told us."
"But he's going to take all of you down to the basement."
"Well, he hasn't begun yet, anyhow. And I suppose you weren't hobnobbing
with him in the corridor down on Fourth ten minutes ago either."
Violet was certainly shocked by this revelation of the speed at which
interesting news could travel from floor to floor in the vastness of the
Palace. And she was very much more severely shocked as Miss Prentiss
proceeded:
"And then Sir Henry Savott. Who was it who was carrying on with _him_ up
here on Eighth? They sent you down to Third to stop it. And he follows
you down to Third! And they have to send you back to Eighth, to stop it
again."
Violet was angry, as well as astounded. At first she could not speak.
Then she began to speak, but controlling herself, ceased on the first
syllable.
"Miss Prentiss," said Mac with protesting dignity. "You ought to be
ashamed!"
"Well, I'm not then," said Miss Prentiss, facing Mac. "It's the talk of
the hotel.... And I wish to say again that I shall give in my notice
to-morrow morning." She spoke with a soft, fierce, mincing disdain.
"And so shall I," added Miss Venables, in her loftiest Mayfair accents.
"That's what we came to tell you. We told you when we came in. And we
tell you again. There's plenty of places waiting for girls like us. So
you needn't think, Miss Maclaren! Good night."
"Good night," said Miss Prentiss.
The farewells were directed solely to Miss Maclaren. Miss Prentiss
closed the door in the same manner as--Violet had noticed--she deposited
her knife and fork on her plate in the restaurant, soundlessly.
II
Violet was being very brave, when she saw that Mac had begun to cry,
whereupon she began to cry herself, at first against her will and
sparingly, then plenteously and with abandonment. It was that phrase
'carrying on with _him_' that had perturbed Violet. Monstrous, utterly
unfounded slur! And then the odious insinuation that she had been sent
down to Third by a watchful all-knowing management in order to separate
her from Sir Henry, and sent back to Eighth with the same intent! She
was revolted. She felt as though a pail of slops had been thrown at her,
as though she could never be clean again. Mac's sobbing sympathy for her
in the frightful slander was very touching, and it alone would have
sufficed to undo her self-control.
She sat down on the sofa close by Mac. There were two sleepless
black-frocked creatures in the room now, and they were united in a close
embrace, Mac's arms flung passionately round Violet's neck. No longer
were they key-rattling housekeepers, sternly devoted to duty, but weak
girls martyrised by hard destiny and the injustice of fate.
"What am I to do? Tell me what I am to do?" Mac sniffed uncertainly.
"Here I'm appointed head-housekeeper, and the first thing is two of my
staff give notice! What will Mr. Cousin say?"
Violet stopped crying, almost with a jerk, as she realised that Mac's
grief was not for her, Violet, but for herself. She gently freed her
neck from the encircling arms, and stood up.
"Where are the tea-things?" she asked. "In the bedroom?"
Mac nodded, being unable now to articulate.
"I'll make some."
Violet went straight into the bedroom, switched on the electricity, and
lit the spirit-lamp which was on the glass shelf above the
lavatory-basin. After a moment Mac appeared all wet in the doorway.
"I've got that indigestion again," said she.
"Nerves," said Violet soothingly. "Some tea will put it right. You don't
have to do anything, my dear." She filled the flat saucepan and ledged
it over the blue flame. "Where's the tea-canister? They're only jealous
of you. Mr. Cousin will understand. And I'm quite sure Mr. Orcham will."
"I only told those women about some things they hadn't done, this
afternoon. I was very careful with them, but I had to tell them off a
bit, hadn't I? They've been against me ever since I was appointed. Dead
against me. I've felt it all the time."
"Well of course! They're jealous!"
"Have they said anything to you about their being jealous, either of
them?"
"Not they!" Violet exclaimed. "They knew what they'd get if they did."
"D'ye mean they thought one of them ought to have been given the post,
instead of me?"
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Violet. "And if one of 'em had got the
job, wouldn't the other one have been jealous all the same! Wouldn't she
just! I think Prentiss was the worst. Do you remember what you said to
me the other day?" Violet had now covered the saucepan and put the
teapot on the lid to get warm.
"What?"
"You said there were too many housekeepers in this hotel. So there are.
If you tell Mr. Cousin you think one housekeeper ought to be enough for
every two floors, and that anyhow you'd like to try it, and you don't
want any fresh ones to take the place of that pair--if you tell him that
he'll see the point quick enough. And so will Mr. Orcham. You take it
from me, Mac."
"D'ye really think so?"
"Of course I do. _They_ know how jealous girls are! Blast the canister!
Why the hell won't it open?"
Never before had Mac heard bad language from the lips of her Violet. But
she did not flinch.
"And how nasty they were to you!" said Mac, at last perceiving, in her
relief at the suggested policy, that Violet too had something of a
grievance against Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss. "Such nonsense!
Disgusting, that's what it is! Makes you feel perfectly sick! At least
it does me--I don't know how you feel."
"Oh! That's nothing, all that," said Violet with a stiff smile. "But I
_should_ like to know what put the idea into their heads."
"They just made it up. I mean Prentiss did."
Violet, however, surmised that Prentiss had indeed heard some murmur
descended from on high, and that she had given the true, humiliating
explanation of the tactics of the management in jumping her from floor
to floor. And she was staggered. The real explanation she did not
suspect for one moment. She acquitted Mr. Orcham of any share in the
shifting, and attributed it entirely to the foreignness of Mr. Cousin.
But on what conceivable ground could even Mr. Cousin have accused her in
his French mind of 'carrying on'?
"Of course I shall leave," she said calmly. "What else is there to do?"
And then Mac, losing the last fragment of her Lowland phlegm, dropped on
her knees at the feet of Violet and convulsively clasped her legs.
"Don't leave me!" she implored, pressing her face against Violet's
skirt. "That would be three. And where should I be then? I never liked
anyone as much as I like you. You simply can't leave me. I'll see you
through all right. Violet! Violet!"
The appeal was irresistible. Strange that, as Violet yielded emotionally
to its power, in the same instant she saw clearly that for her own sake
she must not leave, could not leave. If she left and went to Sir Henry
Savott as his housekeeper--sinister word!--the Imperial Palace would hum
from top to bottom with the scandal of her shame. Everybody would say
that the correctness of the suspicion against her of 'carrying on' had
been only too horribly proved. She would not herself hear those
mischievous tongues, but she would know that they were at work. And she
could not tolerate the knowledge. Whereas if she stayed, the scandal
would die away. She resolved to write a refusal to Sir Henry.
"Very well, dear," she said quietly to Mac, and lifted Mac up.
The water boiled. The tea was borne into the sitting-room. They drank
side by side, and were tranquillised.
"That's a clever idea of yours about what I ought to say to Mr. Cousin,
dear," said Mac. "You're awfully clever. You are a dear." Her Scotch
accent had somewhat subsided.
The clock showed past midnight.
CHAPTER XL
NEGOTIATION
I
The scene of the supreme encounter concerning the merger had been laid
by Evelyn in his private office. Old Dennis Dover and Evelyn himself sat
side by side at the large desk, their backs to the window. Sir Henry
Savott, also at the desk, faced them. There was nobody else in the room.
These three alone were fighting over the terms upon which the Imperial
Palace (with the satellite Wey Hotel) should add its indispensable
prestige and power to Sir Henry's projected group. The desk was littered
with papers--statistics, balance-sheets, valuations, estimates, reports,
and mere jottings scribbled by one or other of the three as the
discussion proceeded. Ash-trays were laden with cigarette and cigar
ends; the air was full of smoke.
The conference had begun at eleven-thirty, and now the small clock on
the mantelpiece apologetically showed three minutes to two. In the two
hours and a half nobody had entered, no telephone bell had rung; Evelyn
had taken his precautions for absolute tranquillity. At intervals each
of the three men had glanced covertly at the relentless clock. It never
stopped, and sometimes it had seemed to move its hands with a most
unnatural speed. The three, especially Dennis Dover, had hoped that
agreement on the main point at issue would surely be reached by
half-past one; then surely at twenty to two; then surely at ten to two.
Disappointment followed disappointment. But every instant of the grand
altercation appeared to be crucial. No one, therefore, dared to suggest
a break for lunch. All three feared that to adjourn might be to lose
valuable ground won at such expenditure of finesse, cunning diplomacy
and sheer brainwork.
Savott was tirelessly energetic, vivacious, good-humoured. Evelyn was
tirelessly wary, watchful and bland. But in the old man fatigue had
engendered both taciturnity and obstinacy. Father Dennis, exhausted,
would die rather than be the first to propose a dangerous armistice. Not
much more than a decade between him and Savott, and yet they seemed to
belong to different generations, not only physically, but in outlook and
in mental methods.
"Listen!" said Savott brightly, in a new tone, as though he were
starting the third and last movement, the allegro, of a sonata. He lit a
new cigarette. "Listen! I quite admit you're trying to meet me on minor
but not unimportant points. I'll make it £2 10_s._ a share, to be paid
in either cash, Orcham shares, or Orcham debentures convertible into
Orcham shares."
The altercation was as to the price at which the Merger was to buy or
otherwise take over the ordinary shares of the Imperial Palace Hotel
Company. Savott had already christened the Merger the "Orcham Company,"
and he insistently repeated the magical word so flattering to Evelyn.
One of his subtle devices in negotiation.
Father Dennis shook his grim head.
"No! Not quite good enough!" father Dennis murmured hoarsely in his
invalid throat.
"I'm afraid not," said Evelyn blandly in support of his Chairman.
Savott raised his arms, not in surrender, but as a sign that futile
stalemate had been achieved in the great game. Then the door slowly
opened, with no warning knock. Two waiters entered, one after the other,
each pushing a wheeled table loaded with food and drink and the
apparatus of a meal.
"Aha!" Savott exclaimed, jumping up.
The aged eyes of Dennis Dover gleamed hungrily and thirstily. Evelyn
smiled the smile of a master of tactics. Foreseeing the possibility of a
protracted sitting, he had ordained that, if the secret conference was
still in session at two o'clock, at two o'clock precisely refreshments
should be brought in without any preliminaries of permission asked and
granted. He had chosen in detail the food and the drink, including
Dennis Dover's favourite cocktail, caviare, Derby Round, and Russian
salad. There the refreshments were, alluring, irresistible; a
magnificent fact to be faced, and faced immediately.
"Fall to!" said Evelyn.
"Fall to!" said father Dennis.
"You are unique, Orcham!" said Savott, candidly admiring.
"He is unique!" growled and squeaked father Dennis.
"Open one of those windows--wide," said Evelyn to a waiter. And when the
window was wide open he said to the waiters: "You can both go. We will
help ourselves."
The trio were alone again together.
"Aha!" Savott repeated himself, drinking a cocktail after he had passed
one deferentially to father Dennis, who, grumbling as often before at
the discomfort of the Palace chairs, rose to take the glass.
All three men were now standing up, stretching their arms and legs,
walking to and fro in the freshness of the new air from the window,
glancing at Miss Cass's horticultural window-boxes, pecking here and
pecking there with forks, offering plates to one another, drinking,
munching not without noise. Documents were hidden under plates and
glasses. In three minutes father Dennis was beginning to be rejuvenated
and also mellowed. With his immense, unwieldy and yet noble bulk, his
age, his experience of the world, he unconsciously assumed dominion over
his companions. Evelyn saw Savott transformed swiftly from the canny,
astute negotiator into the avid gourmand of the dinner-table in the
restaurant weeks earlier. As for Evelyn himself, he could not hide his
satisfaction, and he made no effort to do so.
"If you think I can stand that hurricane in the small of my back, you've
been misinformed," croaked father Dennis, his mouth full, after a few
minutes.
Evelyn closed the window.
"Now let's see how far we've got?" said Savott, dropping into an
easy-chair, crossing his legs, and lighting a cigar before he had quite
finished with a peach.
"Yes," Evelyn agreed. "Let's see how far we've got."
"Yes," said father Dennis, "let's look on the bright side for a change."
The will to reach agreement by compromise was stirring.
"Your salary as Managing Director is settled," Savott addressed Evelyn.
"My salary is settled," said Evelyn.
"I think you have reason to be satisfied with it," said Savott, smiling.
"Quite," said Evelyn.
The salary was indeed very high. Evelyn's earnings would be nearly
doubled.
"And the term? You still insist on a twelve years' contract? Ten is more
usual, you know. I should prefer ten, as a matter of form. Of course I
expect your contract to run for twenty years, thirty. But as a----"
Evelyn interrupted the sentence with a shake of the head and a lifting
of the broad shoulders.
"Twelve," said he, smiling very amiably.
"All right. All right!" Savott laughed.
Evelyn's private reason for demanding a twelve-year contract was that it
would carry him in security past the age of sixty. He had an idea of
retiring at sixty; or, if his vitality forbade such a step, then of
buying a smallish hotel in an English seaside resort and proving to the
world that the existence of a truly first-class hotel in an English
seaside resort was not an impossibility.
"And the constitution of the first Orcham Board of Directors is agreed?"
Savott proceeded.
"It is," said father Dennis. "But it's understood that after serving as
Chairman of this fabulous Merger for one year I shall step down and
leave the throne to be fought for by rival pretenders."
"That's a detail, Mr. Dover," said Savott.
"It isn't a detail at all," said father Dennis. "For me it's the most
important point in the whole damned conspiracy to bleed innocent
travellers. Even now, instead of presiding over mergers, I ought to be
in bed surrounded by my devoted grandchildren." He added with a squeak:
"Only I haven't any grandchildren."
The other two laughed.
"Next," Savott went on, "I agree that my valuations of the Majestic and
the Duncannon and the continental hotels are to be approved by your
valuers. Orcham agrees to make a tour at once of all the hotels, and the
entire arrangement is to be subject to his being satisfied. I've shown
you my scheme for raising capital and underwriting it, and I agree to
produce to you as soon as possible my contracts for this purpose with
the three City houses I've told you of."
Savott continued from item to item. Father Dennis and Evelyn listened
and nodded when necessary. There was no discord.
"I fancy that's all," Savott finished, content with the orderly
clearness of his résumé of the plan, with his strong grasp of all the
statistics, and with his accomplishment as a negotiator and deviser.
Mind alone is creative. Sir Henry Savott had now all but thought his
Merger into existence. One more touch, and the vast design would
magically appear, visible, concrete, complete, the wonder of the world.
II
"It isn't all," growled father Dennis.
"No. It isn't _all_," said Savott. "Naturally. Let's come back to the
price of Imperial Palace shares. I've quoted you £2 10_s._ Now
seriously, what about it?"
Father Dennis shook his ancient head, and glanced at Evelyn, who also
gave a negative sign.
"You really mustn't make it too difficult for the Orcham Company to pay
a dividend," smiled Henry Savott.
"We have to think of our shareholders," said father Dennis. "And we
haven't got to think of anything else. If you consider our price too
high----"
"I do," said Savott.
"Then it's for you to say so plainly and definitely, and the scheme's on
the scrap-heap."
"But your own valuations of your own property don't justify----"
"Valuations! Valuations! And our reserves, in cash and gilt-edged?"
"I'm not forgetting them."
"But you're forgetting that we're selling you something that can't _be_
valued," father Dennis squeakily continued. "If you weren't forgetting
that you surely wouldn't talk about valuations. We're selling you the
very _sine qua non_ of your scheme. What is the scheme without the
Imperial Palace and Orcham? You'ld never have thought of it without
them. What the Merger must have is our prestige. Take that away and it's
worth exactly elevenpence three farthings."
"I quite agree," said Savott lightly, even submissively. "And wasn't I
the first to say so? But I should like you to remember this. If I'd got
hold of a majority or anywhere near a majority of Palace shares, as I
meant to do, only you scotched me by altering the voting power of your
shares while my head was turned the other way--what would have happened?
I should have been able to name my own price for your shares, and what
I'd lost on the shares I should have made on the Merger, and more."
"Certainly," father Dennis hoarsely whispered. "There's no argument
about that. But we did alter the voting power, thereby putting you
gently into the soup, my friend. _If_ this and _if_ that, you would have
been able to name your own price. But as there don't happen to be any
ifs, we can name our price. And it's a price the Merger can well afford
to pay. It isn't as if we hadn't come down a bit. Our price is £2 15_s._
"That's your lowest?"
"Our lowest."
"Well, I'm sorry. My last word is £2 10_s._," said Sir Henry genially,
and as he spoke he began to collect his papers together on the desk. A
deciding gesture.
Evelyn gazed at him, met his hard, steely eyes. There was no compromise
in them; nor in his teeth. The gourmand had quitted the body of Sir
Henry Savott. His tiny eyes were two brass tacks, and the Imperial
Palace had at last come down to those brass tacks. The battle was
finished. The opposing armies would both have to retire.
"I'm sorry," Sir Henry repeated meditatively. "Yes, I'm very sorry. I'm
more disappointed than I can say. I must apologise to you for putting
you to so much trouble for nothing. I don't complain, mind you. Not in
the least. You know your own business best. Only I've got a sort of a
notion of my business too. We differ, and there's no more to be said.
But you'll find yourselves wrong about one thing. I shall go on with my
Merger. Nothing is indispensable, not even the Imperial Palace. I've set
my heart on a Merger. I've never set my heart on anything and failed to
get it. I'll carry the Merger through, and I'll give you the fight of
your life, whatever it costs me. There must be another Orcham lying
about somewhere in the world. I'll find him."
"Bravo!" Evelyn exclaimed, touched to admiration for the man's
passionate, exalted demeanour. Savott was once more the poet who had
divulged himself at the opening dinner in Evelyn's castle.
But Evelyn was very deeply depressed, realising now fully for the first
time how powerfully the great scheme of the Merger had appealed to his
instincts. And in his disappointment he felt that he had nothing to live
for. And he was desolated by the thought that all their work, all
Savott's creative faculty, all father Dennis's broadminded caution, all
his own watchful mastery of detail, had come to naught. Naught! He
sympathised with Savott as much as with father Dennis and himself. And
he questioned the wisdom of father Dennis's rather abrupt handling of
the climax of the fray. Still, he was rigidly loyal to father Dennis.
They were intimate friends. They understood one another. They trusted
one another absolutely. And after all the Merger would have been at best
a dangerous and chancy enterprise!
Sir Henry Savott at this depressing juncture behaved with an infinite
discreet propriety. Many men would have dawdled, would have exasperated
affliction by futile remarks. Sir Henry, having pulled his papers from
beneath plates, stowed them all into a despatch-case, said "Good
afternoon" very simply and amicably, and moved briskly to the door. He
was indeed a man, thought Evelyn. And the rumours of his precarious
position as a high financier were indeed silly. Somehow Evelyn felt
ashamed, for all three of them.
Having opened the door, Sir Henry startlingly halted and faced the
enemy.
"Split the difference," he snapped harshly.
Evelyn's heart jumped. Father Dennis looked at Evelyn, and Evelyn at
father Dennis. Evelyn saw a look of persistent obstinacy in the old
man's furrowed face. He withstood the look and smiled. A mighty demon
had rushingly entered into him and assumed control of all his faculties.
"It's a deal," said the demon, with quiet assurance.
"Oh, very well!" father Dennis whispered pleasantly, having yielded to
Evelyn's astonishing sudden domination.
The Imperial Palace was sold.
Evelyn and father Dennis were the masters of the Imperial Palace Board,
and the Board was the autocrat of the Company; and all minor outstanding
difficulties between the Company and the Merger were easily capable of
settlement. In six words the Imperial Palace had been sold.
III
Dropping his despatch-case conveniently near the door, Sir Henry Savott
returned to the desk. The three shook hands, not unsentimentally.
Conscious of the sentimentality, and determined to correct it, father
Dennis stood up and growled, "Damn it all!" and went to one of the
wheeled tables and poured out three liqueur brandies with his infirm
hand, spilling some priceless liquid. And Evelyn, who never in any
circumstances took either spirits or liqueurs said, "Damn it all!" and
gazed at the brandy and slowly drank. They all three drank together.
Having committed this sublime folly, Evelyn smacked his lips. Old Dover
and he were more occupied with one another than with Sir Henry Savott.
Had they been attentive they would have noticed moisture in his little
eyes. Sir Henry had not staked millions, but millions somehow had been
staked. He had staked the value of years of mole-tunnelling, and of a
week of the delicatest diplomacy and bargaining. He had staged a
rupture, and acted it with convincing realism. He had acted to the last
second. He knew that if he had not gone to the door and given his
opponents time for regret, he would not have managed to squeeze out of
them the concession of half the difference; and he had decided that
beyond half the difference he would not and could not yield. Further, he
had staked his belief in himself. Still further, he had secured the five
hundred thousand pounds which was the least personal profit that he
expected to make out of the whole transaction. Sir Henry had lived
through intolerable years in a quarter of an hour. Old Dover was
indifferent to the scheme's success or failure. Evelyn would very
quickly have reconciled himself to its failure. But to Sir Henry the
fruition of the scheme was necessary, both morally and financially. None
save himself knew, and few genuinely suspected, that his career had
arrived at a point when a failure might ruin it--at any rate
temporarily. Well, he had succeeded. Multitudinous risks and perils yet
lay before him. But he had triumphed so far, and for the future he had
an equal confidence in himself and in Evelyn Orcham. He had won, and he
would win. Hence the emotional moisture in his tiny eyes: phenomenon
which his late opponents, now his allies, had been too self-absorbed to
observe. The moisture quickly vanished.
"My car's been waiting two hours, and even chauffeurs have to eat,"
squeaked father Dennis. "Good-bye. Seems to me I look like being the
biggest shareholder even in your new Company, Savott." He gave a
sardonic, masterful grin as he strode cumbrously from the scene of
battle.
"By the way," said Sir Henry to Evelyn, with an affectation of
nonchalance concerning the upshot of the mighty encounter. "That Powler
girl declined my offer."
"Oh yes!" Evelyn answered. "So I heard."
"Did she tell you then?"
"No. But she told my head-housekeeper she should stay here, and the
thing got about. Things do, you know. This place is a regular
whispering-gallery." He laughed easily. But he was uneasily thinking of
a phrase used by Savott at the height of the battle: "I've never set my
heart on anything and failed to get it."
A little later Sir Henry quietly departed, and Evelyn was alone in his
office amid a disorder of dirty crockery, electroplate and glass. After
a crisis he always liked solitude. He walked slowly about the room,
smoking one of the non-nicotine cigarettes which he kept specially for
use when he had indulged unduly in cigars. He smiled to himself. The
deed was done. Nothing but some incredible mischance of destiny could
prevent him from becoming in a few months the absolute autocrat of the
most grandiose chain of luxury hotels in the world. The Imperial Palace
Company would be wound up. Hence the Board of Directors of the Imperial
Palace would cease to be. Either the youthful Dacker or the youthful
Smiss would be elected to the Board of the new big Company. There would
not be room for both of them: continental interests must be considered.
But which of them: Dacker or Smiss? He was inclined to nominate Dacker,
with whom he was in closer personal relations. Smiss, however, would be
invaluable on the Board when it had to deal with the works' departments
of its hotels: and he spoke more foreign languages than Dacker. What did
it matter? These young men must take the rough with the smooth; and
anyhow the one who lost a directorship could be compensated in forty
ways. He, Evelyn, would henceforth have the distribution of an enormous
patronage!
Suddenly he thought, with a qualm:
"Am I equal to the job? I wonder. Everybody believes in me. But do I
believe in myself?" Yes, a qualm; a momentary sensation of all-gone-ness
beneath the heart!
Suddenly he thought:
"That fellow Savott's been a bit obscure about his underwriting after
all. I suppose it'll be all right. I bet anything Harry Matcham Lord
Watlington's really at the back of it. Those City houses don't often
stand by themselves."
Suddenly he thought:
"Why did the fellow choose that moment to tell me he'd missed fire with
the Powler woman? I expect it was just a subconscious nervous reaction
from the strain. He's been working hard, the fellow has, these days. So
have I."
As a fact Evelyn, absorbed in the complex skirmishing preliminary to the
great battle over the price to be paid for Imperial Palace shares, had
almost forgotten the existence of his protégée from the Laundry. He had
heard that she was not going to desert the hotel, but he had heard as in
a dream. And for him Violet was a shade. What difference could it make
to the huge "Orcham" Company whether a mere floor-housekeeper of _one_
of its hotels, be she never so admirable, stayed or departed? A detail!
A trifling detail! The entire perspective of life was altered now.
Evelyn dropped the cigarette-end, and impulsively left the room, passing
through Miss Cass's secretarial office.
IV
"Anything urgent for me?" he demanded.
"No, sir. There's only the----"
"Is it urgent?"
"No, sir."
"Then we'll let it simmer."
Did she look at him in a strange way, or was he imagining the
strangeness. In either case she _knew_. She was necessarily aware of the
negotiations, and she would have guessed the result from Savott's
demeanour as he went out, if not from father Dennis's, if not from his
own. Astonishing, the faculty of that brisk, self-possessed woman for
divination! Often her knowledge of secrets had surprised him. In
displaying her knowledge she always skilfully assumed that he must know
that she knew. But he trusted her. She was a tomb for secrets. But was
she a tomb? Was he justified in trusting her? Why had he grown
suspicious? Beyond the outer door a waiter was waiting.
"May I take away the things, sir?"
"You may."
He would stroll round his hotel--one of his hotels! He always enjoyed
these strolls, and sometimes they were rather useful. But a few yards
down the side-corridor he met Ceria, the Grill-room-manager, emerging
from Cousin's managerial office.
"Well, Ceria," he greeted the young man. "What are you doing here at
this hour? I always understood you spent the afternoon in the bosom of
your family at Hampstead."
Ceria smiled. He was a little younger than Cappone, the
Restaurant-manager, and his smile, wistful, innocent, appealing, was
judged to be more enchanting than even that of Cappone. Ceria counted
among Evelyn's finest selections. He had made the grill-room the regular
resort of the newspaper-magnates, the film-kings and the theatrical
stars of London. At lunch the place was now crowded. At dinner it was
fairly full. At supper it was very full. No self-respecting actress
could dispense with two or three appearances a week for supper in the
Palace Grill. To be seen frequently there, to be on terms of intimacy
with Ceria, was the final proof of success. The one trouble about Ceria
was the pronunciation of his name. The film-kings unanimously pronounced
it "Seeria." The more learned and cosmopolitan pronounced it "Cheeria,"
save a few daring wags among them who called him "Cheerio." Only the
highest highbrows pronounced it in the Italian way. Ceria had the same
wonder-working smile for all of them: the smile of perfect health and
almost perfect happiness.
Ignoring Evelyn's question, Ceria said, excited:
"My Feras have arrived, sir."
"Your what?"
"The fish from the Lake of Geneva. By aeroplane. Caught this morning. On
my dinner menu to-night."
Evelyn remembered hearing of the Fera enterprise.
"Have you told Immerson?"
"Oh yes, sir."
Immerson would make something of the Feras in his weekly gossip
paragraphs.
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn. "It's a great stunt."
"Mr. Immerson calls them my 'flying fish,' sir."
Ceria laughed with joy. He would have talked at length on the piquant
subject of the day; but Evelyn left him with a nod. What the devil did
fish matter? One dish, one night, in one restaurant, in one of his
hotels. Still, he had his eye on Ceria. The grill-room was very firmly
established in renown, and under Ceria was an older man, a Frenchman,
who could well carry on the great work. Whereas Ceria, shifted to the
Majestic, might marvellously vitalise the semi-comatose Majestic
restaurant.
Evelyn strolled on into the great entrance-hall. There were the mirrored
columns, the ceiling lights, the coloured prints of old steamships and
the photographs of modern steamships underneath them, the sofas, the
easy-chairs, the little tables, an underling at the Reception counter,
another at the Enquiries counter, with their eternally illuminated
signs, a page-boy entering in a book the times of the tell-tale signal
board which told the story of every ring of every visitor's bell on the
Floors above, the newspaper-stand deserted, large old Mowlem, the
hall-porter, splendid and dignified in his cubicle between the revolving
doors! Odd: the Palace existed exactly as usual, not witting that it had
been sold, that the old order had changed into the new!
He turned to the right, down into the foyer, which was empty. The last
of the dilatory lunchers had gone. The bandsmen were carrying away from
the restaurant their lighter instruments and their music. Waiters were
setting the tables for the afternoon _thé dansant_. The gentlemen's
cloak-room was empty and had only one attendant. The glass-walled
reading-room was quite empty. The hotel was at its deadest. Evelyn
stayed a few moments, humming to himself the extraordinary fact that
nobody guessed at the tremendous revolution. He strolled back to the
entrance-hall. And there was Sir Henry Savott conversing earnestly with
the portly Mowlem! Evelyn watched the interview. What chicane now? It
was curious that on the very slightest evidence he would instantly begin
to suspect Savott of chicane, plots, manoeuvres. Yet he liked and
sincerely admired the man. He had learnt to like him, and had been
compelled to admire him. Never had Evelyn been presented with so clear a
statement of involved facts and figures as Savott had laid before him
and old Dover concerning the proposed merger. And Savott had prepared
the array of statistics himself. Savott said that he had done it with
his own brain and hand, and Evelyn believed him.
Evelyn thought:
"Supposing in a year or two's time the fellow starts hanky-pankying with
the 'Orcham' shares, in the vein of his performance with North
Atlantics!"
And then he thought with affection and pleasure of Dennis Dover, who had
so "decently" followed his perhaps too arbitrary lead in closing the
share bargain. Moreover, father Dennis might have got cash or debentures
for his huge holding of shares in the Imperial Palace Company. But,
because he loved Evelyn, he had decided from the first to stand by
Evelyn, and to exchange his Palace shares for shares in the new Merger
Company, the Orcham Company. Loyalty! Evelyn was touched. Evelyn would
make the new Company a success, if only for the sake of father Dennis.
He saw Sir Henry nod to old Mowlem and then push his way, with the aid
of a janissary outside, through the revolving doors. Evelyn strolled to
the hall-porter's cubicle.
"Sir Henry in any difficulty, Mowlem?" he enquired.
"No, sir. Mr. Adolphe didn't happen to be at the Reception, so Sir Henry
came to me. He's leaving us later in the afternoon."
Evelyn saw Sir Henry's automobile curve away into Birdcage Walk.
"Oh! Where is he going to?" Evelyn asked. And said to himself: "What's
the meaning of this? He didn't tell me anything about leaving."
"Sir Henry didn't say, sir. Only told me to have his luggage down at
five."
"Ah!... Well, Mowlem, I shall be leaving myself for a while in a day
or two."
"For long, sir?"
"No, not for long. It depends."
"Continent, sir?"
"Yes."
"When you come back, sir, I should like a chat with you, if you can
spare me a moment."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir. Of course you know I always said I should retire at sixty.
And I'm sixty next month."
"Now, Mowlem, Mowlem!" Evelyn protested, with a sadness which he really
felt. "_You_ may have said you were going to retire. But _I_ never said
you were. What does Mr. Cousin say?"
"To tell you the truth, sir, I haven't mentioned the matter to Mr.
Cousin." Evelyn heard in the important functionary's patriarchal,
stately tone a reminder that he, Mowlem, had been in the service of the
Palace years and years before Mr. Cousin had ever been heard of, that
compared to himself Mr. Cousin was a mushroom, and that Mowlem judged
himself entitled to deal direct with Mr. Cousin's superior.
"Mr. Cousin won't let you go. He thinks too highly of you," said Evelyn
benevolently.
"Well, sir," Mowlem replied with dignity. "We shall see. Sixty is sixty.
Times change." He gazed at Evelyn steadily.
Then Jim, Savott's valet, pale after his illness, appeared in the hall,
questing for the hall-porter. Evelyn walked away.
"Mowlem knows," thought Evelyn.
Somehow he felt guilty. And he still felt guilty, self-conscious, when,
half a minute afterwards, he entered Cousin's office and said, with a
painful effort to be casual:
"Well, Cousin. _C'est fait._"
CHAPTER XLI
AN ATTACK
I
One night, a week or two later, Violet was taking her French lesson from
old Perosi, but in the waiters' service-room on Eighth. Miss Maclaren
had gone downstairs to talk direct with Ceria, the Grill-room-manager,
about certain questions which had arisen concerning the Floors
night-menus. Violet was on late duty that evening. Miss Maclaren seemed
to dislike giving permission even to her dear friend and prop, Vi, to
leave Eighth during her own absence; and Miss Maclaren being again
dyspeptically indisposed, was hardly in a condition to be argued with.
Hence Perosi, who now treated Violet very paternally and benevolently
indeed, had with unique and august condescension, offered to desert
Fourth, his proper home, and come up to Eighth for the purpose of the
lesson. He knew that the lesson might at any moment be interrupted by
some trifling emergency on Sixth, Seventh or Eighth; but he was
majestically ready to accept the risk; the fact was that the ponderous
man enjoyed his rôle of tutor.
In the still warmth of the little service-room, from which the
floor-waiter had been ejected before his evening spell of duty was over,
both Perosi and Violet--but Violet first--heard an unusual stir at the
steel gates of the neighbouring lift. The door of the service-room was
kept always ajar. They both went into the corridor. An excited page-boy
had stepped out of the lift. Within the lift were Ted, the liftman, who
had just 'come on,' and Ceria himself. Also Miss Maclaren. Pale,
perspiring, agonised, Miss Maclaren sat on the cushioned bench of the
lift, and Ceria was supporting her in his arms.
"_Qu'est-ce qu'elle a? Qu'est-ce qu'elle a?_" Perosi demanded.
"_Elle a eu une attaque_," Ceria replied, in his Italian accent.
Despite her tuition, Violet understood only the last word.
"She must be carried to her bedroom," said Violet quickly. It was
obvious that Miss Maclaren suffered acute pain.
The bell in the lift rang several times impatiently, and a tiny light
glowed yellow on the signal-box: 'Ground-floor.' The bell continued to
ring. At a gesture from Ceria, Ted took the moaning woman round her
knees, and Ceria took her under the arms, and between them they moved
her out of the lift. Ceria was already somewhat breathless, for alone
without aid he had carried her from his little office to the lift.
"Keep her head lower, Mr. Ceria," Violet suggested.
"Take the lift down, kid," said Ted to the page-boy, glancing back.
Thrilled by his responsibility, the white-gloved dwarf obeyed.
The procession of Mac's body passed along the corridor, Violet in front,
Perosi muttering behind. Violet ran into Mac's room, left the
entrance-door open, left the bedroom-door open, turned down the
bed-clothes with two rapid movements. In half a minute Mac lay panting
and writhing in pain on the bed; the liftman had reluctantly departed.
"I'll telephone for Dr. Constam," said Violet. "Where does he live? I
suppose he doesn't happen to be in the hotel?"
"The doctor is coming," Ceria answered with a sad, sympathetic and yet
proud smile. "I said to them to telephone for him before I came up. He
is in the hotel. Santa Maria!" His wistful eyes said: "I had forgotten
nothing. This is Imperial Palace staff-work." He added aloud: "I think
it was the doctor who was ringing for the lift."
It was. Going to the door, Violet met Dr. Constam entering. The young
man nodded.
"In here?" he asked quietly, and strode into the bedroom. He nodded to
Ceria.
"Right, Ceria."
Ceria left, also reluctantly. Violet and Dr. Constam were alone together
in the bedroom. The doctor was now the expert in charge. He bent over
the bed to examine.
"Shall I sponge her face for her?" Violet asked.
"No. Wait a minute."
Violet discreetly moved away from the bedside, and thoughts scurried
through her mind. Miss Maclaren was very ill. Climax of her dyspepsia.
Why were dyspeptics always greedy? The hotel had ceased to exist. Hotel
duties had lost all their importance. The martyr to hotel duties was
very ill. How startlingly rapid were changes! Mrs. O'Riordan was
married--Lady Milligan. She had forfeited her wedding-present. She was
gone, without trace, and for ever. Alice Brury was at the Laundry.
Violet had left the Laundry. Venables and Prentiss were soon to leave
the Palace. Violet felt as though she had lived in the hotel for many
months, instead of merely a few weeks. She was learning French. The
interrupted French lesson had passed clean out of her head. Mr. Orcham
was away on the Continent. The hotel was functioning as smoothly as
usual. Nevertheless his absence was mysteriously felt. Mac herself had
remarked that very morning on the strange effect produced upon the mind
by Mr. Orcham's absence. Violet had felt it, though she had not been
accustomed to seeing him. Mac was very ill. Violet wanted to do
something for the sufferer, but she was helpless. Where was Perosi? He
had vanished.
"Get me some water, only a sip, will you?" said Dr. Constam.
Violet was quick. He poured the sip down Mac's throat.
"Where's the telephone?"
"In the sitting-room. Can I 'phone for you, doctor?"
"No." The doctor was brusque but quite courteous.
Violet, gently caressing Mac's brow, heard him telephoning. She gathered
that he was calling up a hospital. His tone at the telephone was
authoritative. He seemed to hold the hospital, all the hospitals in
London, under his sway.
"It's extremely urgent," she heard him say. "You'd better send an
ambulance. No. The motor-ambulance. Yes, at once. I'll be ready." He
came back into the bedroom, and said to Violet: "There's a nurse in 538.
She can't be very busy. Go and fetch her--yourself. Tell her I sent you.
And bring her along."
"Yes, doctor. Is this something serious?" she whispered from the door.
"It's serious. But exactly what it is I'm not sure yet. Colon, anyhow.
Run. And then get a stretcher." He spoke in a scarcely audible murmur.
Violet ran. Perosi was standing outside.
II
"Mr. Perosi," she threw at him. "The doctor wants a stretcher." No more
than that. She left him to procure the stretcher.
When she returned with the nurse, who was much too deliberate and
detached for Violet's taste, Perosi was manoeuvring a stretcher through
the door into the sitting-room.
"Come on, nurse," said Dr. Constam, in the doorway between the rooms.
"We've got to get this young woman here downstairs. An ambulance is
coming. You," he addressed Violet, "go and ring for the lift. And keep
it. Don't bring the stretcher in," he addressed Perosi. "We should never
get it out again with the patient in it."
Violet hurried to the lift-well, and rang, rang. She waited, waited. At
last she heard the lift crawling upward. Then a new procession. The
laden stretcher, its burden well covered, Dr. Constam at the foot,
Perosi at the head, the nurse by the side. At the lift, Ted took a hand.
The lift had just space for the stretcher. Ted closed the steel gates.
Doctor and nurse were within. The lift sank away. With it, Mac sank away
out of the life of the hotel. The swiftness of the transformation of the
service life of Eighth was positively frightening. Mac had disappeared.
It was almost as if she had been erased, deleted. Violet and old Perosi
exchanged a long, solemn look.
More than once, Violet, who had returned to Miss Maclaren's rooms--for
no purpose that she could define, was rung up by various departments of
the hotel for definite, authentic information as to the sick woman.
Clearly Mac had anxious friends in the organism of the Palace. Clearly
news of the disaster had spread through the vast building with the usual
extreme rapidity of evil tidings. Violet answered every enquiry with a
quiet reassurance. She never did and never could luxuriate in a
calamity. Her instinct was invariably to minimise trouble. Nevertheless
she was very troubled. The telephone calls in themselves had the effect
of making her think that she had under-estimated the gravity of the
event.
She was not aware that the spectacular passage of the stretcher through
the great hall had created a tremendous impression. In the Imperial
Palace, as in all hotels, cases of serious illness or death were
whenever possible smothered up. Visitors in hotels object strongly to
any reminder that disease exists and that death happens. Therefore sick
bodies and dead bodies are removed surreptitiously, by secret exits. But
the urgency of that night's case had permitted no compliance with the
customary etiquette. At the revolving doors the stretcher with its
bearers, compelled to wait for the dilatory ambulance, had even got
itself entangled with departing and arriving revellers from and to the
restaurant and grill-room. Nothing to wonder at, then, in the enormity
of the sensation.
Violet was deeply disturbed in two ways: in her grief for Mac's perilous
misfortune, and in her anxieties about the housekeeping of the hotel.
Mac would at best be absent for weeks; she might never return; at any
moment during the night or next day or the day after the telephone might
announce the decease of poor old Mac. In the meantime, who would
temporarily be charged with the control of the housekeeping? Assuredly
Venables or Prentiss; for the other floor-housekeepers had neither the
experience nor the moral weight necessary to sustain them in the arduous
job. And Violet was alarmed at the prospect of being subjected to the
rule of either of these ladies who were now her foes and whom no ideal
of magnanimity would prevent from being tyrannical and absurd. She
longed for the soft, masterful presence of Mr. Orcham, who was equal to
every occasion.
Quite apart from Mac's tragic disappearance, the vanishing of Mr. Orcham
had disquieted Violet; it had disquieted all the staff except the lowest
menials. Official information as to its cause had not been vouchsafed,
or at any rate had not percolated down to the stratum of
floor-housekeepers. But the newspapers had given immense front-page
prominence to rumours of a great hotel-merger; so much so that the
foundations of the Palace seemed to tremble under the feet of the staff,
and even floor-housekeepers had taken to scanning the financial columns
of their favourite dailies. Mr. Orcham's name had suddenly become
familiar to citizens, astonished by the abrupt revelation of the
importance of someone whom they had never heard of. But not his
photograph, for despite pressing demands from journalists nobody in the
hotel could furnish a portrait of the panjandrum--the reason being that
no portrait existed. Then one morning the staff had been thrilled by the
appearance of a lifelike photograph in a picture-paper. It had been
obtained in Cannes, by a long-distance lens, unknown to the victim, and
it had been transmitted by telegraph: proof enough of the news-value of
the panjandrum's face. And surely the rumour that the august and unique
Imperial Palace might deign to merge into anything whatever was
sufficient to give an inestimable news-value to the likeness of its
Director.
III
Violet had a desire to talk to somebody. She was arguing with herself
whether she might seek out old Perosi, when there was a tap at Mac's
door. Instantaneously the door opened, and Mr. Cousin imperturbably
entered. Violet jumped up from her chair. And well she might, for not
once hitherto had she seen Mr. Cousin on Eighth, or heard of him being
there! The truth was that, unlike Evelyn, Cousin was not fond of
perambulating the Floors. He preferred to exercise the function of
management from his office, to be the Mahomet to whom mountains came.
Even when he did visit the Floors he would not ascend higher than
Seventh. The former Mrs. O'Riordan had been subtly antipathetic to him,
and because of this he had lost the habit of Eighth, habit which he had
not yet resumed.
Mr. Cousin smiled blandly.
"I am glad you are here, Miss Powler," he said. "I wanted to see you."
"Yes, sir."
He sat down. The hour was close on midnight, but Mr. Cousin's perfect
dress-suit, shirt, collar and cravat were as fresh as though he had just
put them on. In the daytime he had sartorial equals, perhaps superiors;
but at night he was unrivalled.
"Please sit down," said he. Violet obeyed. "It is very sad, this. I hear
that you were present."
"When Miss Maclaren was brought up? Yes, sir."
"Tell me about it."
Violet told. She thought that he listened with negligence.
"Everything is in order on the Floors?"
"So far as I know, sir," Violet replied. "But of course I don't know
about all the Floors."
"For the future, at least until Miss Maclaren has recovered, it will be
your business to know everything about all the floors. I must have
someone in control, someone who is responsible. And you will be good
enough to take Miss Maclaren's place for the present. Provisional, of
course." Violet was extremely surprised, and yet the realistic core of
her mind was not surprised. She knew her capacity, but would admit it
with reluctance, and only in a crisis.
"But surely," she said, excited. "Miss Venables or Miss Prentiss.
They... I... All of them have been here longer than I have, much
longer."
"That is possible," said Mr. Cousin with tranquillity. "But Miss
Venables and Miss Prentiss are leaving. And having regard to their
conduct, I do not wish to add to their responsibilities. As for the
others... No." He waved a hand and benevolently smiled. "It is you
alone who are indicated."
He did not say that from several visitors he had heard praise of Miss
Powler's cheerfulness, obligingness, tactfulness, helpfulness,
efficiency.
"Very well. Thank you, sir," said Violet quietly. What else was there to
say? If you refused the responsibility you said "No" at once. If you
accepted it you said "Very well" and "Thank you," and the matter was
ended. Certainly you did not indulge in any silly, insincere
self-depreciation.
"In case you need help or advice, come to me. Naturally you will have
difficulties, but----" He waved his hand again.
"But about allotting the floors, sir? I expect that Miss Maclaren has
spoken to you about her new plan----"
"That will be as you decide," Mr. Cousin interrupted her.
He rose. She rose. Then he amazed her by holding out his hand. She took
it. They both smiled.
"What hospital is Miss Maclaren in, sir?"
"St. James's," said Mr. Cousin. "You see, we have endowed more than one
bed there with the surplus from our Breakages Fund. They were very
crowded, but of course they wished to oblige us. Good night, Miss
Powler."
He bowed, just perceptibly. Gallic chivalry! Then he said, leaving: "It
may interest you to know that Mr. Orcham has just been telephoning to me
from Cannes. So I told him about Miss Maclaren, and that I had decided
to put you in temporary charge. He approved. Good night again."
Violet wondered what might be the tremendously important business which
could draw these two great personages together on the telephone wire so
late in the evening. She was not aware that every evening Evelyn
enquired by telephone after the health of the Palace, as a man enquires
nightly after the health of a mistress from whom he has been compelled
to absent himself.
For some minutes the fact that Miss Maclaren was very ill was entirely
submerged in her mind by the fact of her incredible, frightening, almost
stupefying appointment as temporary head-housekeeper in the finest
luxury hotel in the world. The post had been Lady Milligan's. It was now
hers. Her parents would be amazed and delighted. No! They would be
delighted, but not amazed. They would say: "Of course! Quite natural.
Just what was to be expected!" Because their belief in her gifts and her
character was a religion with them. It was utterly complete, so complete
that it seemed silly, touching. Poor things!
Then the light wastefully burning in Mac's bedroom caught her attention.
She passed into the bedroom. The bed lay in disorder. The eiderdown had
slid to the floor. She tidied the bed, shook the pillow into shape, and
covered everything, including the eiderdown, with the counterpane. And
having arranged the bed, she arranged the room. Mac, though a fanatic
for tidiness in the rooms of visitors, was strangely negligent of her
own room. She would even leave her flowers to wither up in their vases.
Melancholy martyr, the victim of fate. She had occupied the highest post
of its kind over the whole earth, and probably the best paid in Europe.
She had climbed till she could climb no further. And had her happiness
been thereby increased? It had been diminished considerably. The change
had destroyed her peace of mind, her sleep, her self-confidence; and
intensified her already exaggerated conscientiousness. Nature had not
meant her for supreme authority. And now in a moment she had been swept
away. And doubtless in the hospital ward her last thoughts before
submitting to the anæsthetic, and her first thoughts on awaking from it,
would take the form of foolish worrying anxiety as to the housekeeping
of the Palace. Violet felt heavy with sympathetic woe.
She heard movements in the sitting-room. Venables appeared in the
doorway between the rooms, and Venables too was charged with woe.
IV
"I did knock," said Venables, as usual defending herself before she had
been attacked, "but nobody answered. Mac's gone?"
Violet reflected: "As if she didn't know perfectly well Mac's gone!" She
said: "Oh! An hour ago at least."
"I thought I'd better come up and see. I didn't really know what had
happened. I suppose it's appendicitis?"
"Can't say."
"But it must be."
"Perhaps it is. Only Dr. Constam told me he didn't know. He's gone with
her to the hospital."
"You were here all the time?"
"Yes."
The colloquy showed constraint on both sides; for these words were the
first to be exchanged between the two floor-housekeepers since the
fearsome scene in Mac's sitting-room days and days earlier.
"Gwen and I have been wondering how this place is to be carried on."
Violet reflected: "Yes; and that's what you've come up to find out." She
said: "I think you had better take over Sixth and Fifth. I'll see to
this floor and Seventh. I'll speak to Prentiss to-morrow."
"Oh, indeed!" Venables sniffed, and her dark head began to tremble.
"Yes."
"But who'll be in charge?"
"Mr. Cousin says I am to be."
"So you've been down to see him already?" Fierce but restrained
resentment in Venables' tone.
"No, I haven't. He came up here to see me about it."
A long pause.
Venables said, with a ferocious sarcasm, but carefully ladylike:
"May I use the telephone, please?"
"Of course. Why do you ask such a question?" Violet managed to smile.
Venables stepped back into the sitting-room. Violet heard her say:
"I want you to get up then, dear. Slip something on. I want you to come
here at once, as quick as you can, dear." Her voice trembled, as her
head had been trembling, with terrible emotion.
Violet sat down at the foot of the bed; and the waves of Venables'
excitement seemed to rush in a continuous torrential, invisible stream
through the door and break against Violet's resisting temper. An awful
silence. Violet felt as if she were awaiting the explosive thunder of
the crack of doom.
Then, after an immeasurable period, Prentiss appeared.
"I thought you were never coming, dear!" Violet heard Venables say. The
exalted, trustful, vibrating emphasis that Venables laid on that word
"dear"! The two housekeepers came just within the bedroom and stood
together, allies defensive and offensive. Prentiss wore a purple
dressing-gown pinned at the neck, and bedroom slippers on her bare feet.
Her greying thin hair was in disarray. By contrast with the other two in
their primly correct housekeeper frocks she had an abandoned, indecent
air.
"Do sit down," suggested the alert, watchful Violet.
They did not sit down.
"Now, Powler," said Venables, "will you please tell Prentiss what you've
told me." Then turning to Prentiss: "I want you to hear from her what
she told me, dear."
"About Mr. Cousin?"
"If you don't mind."
Violet complied.
"Well!" the tall, telegraph-pole woman murmured horrified, outraged,
under her breath.
"I can't help it," Violet mildly protested. "Mr. Cousin came up himself
and gave me my orders. I don't give orders. I take them."
"You soon started giving orders to me!" Venables exclaimed. She clasped
her hands and, lifting her head, turned it to one side, shaking.
"But I didn't give you any order," Violet pleaded, as pleasantly and
persuasively as she could. "I only said I thought you'd better take over
Fifth and Sixth. If you've anything against that, let me hear it for
goodness' sake!"
"Is it an order or isn't it?" Venables persisted, apparently determined
to drink the bitterness of her cup to the last drop.
"Have you got any other suggestion?"
"Is it an order or isn't it?" Venables demanded a second time.
"I don't call it an order," said Violet. "But of course if you prefer to
call it an order I can't stop you, can I?"
"Well!" Prentiss muttered. "Venables has been here six years and I've
been here seven, and have you been here seven _weeks_?" Her voice rose a
little, but only a little.
In all the annals of the Imperial Palace, and of the Royal Palace before
it, there had never been a conflict so acute as this one. The conflicts
between Sir Henry Savott on one side and father Dennis and Evelyn on the
other, conflicts involving immense sums of money, were social trifles to
it. The mortally injured pair had lost the freshness of their youth in
the service of the Palace; and Miss Prentiss had seen the oncoming of
middle-age declare itself in that service. The Imperial Palace was their
home, their landscape, their climate, their atmosphere, their habit.
They knew the Palace through and through, though they had never seen its
deep foundations as Violet had disgracefully been privileged to see
them. On Mrs. O'Riordan's desertion each of them had expected to be
raised to her throne. Why not? Had they not the seniority of years, if
not of service? Were they not efficient? Had a black mark ever been
notched against them, until their defence of dignity under the monstrous
assault of Maclaren? Maclaren was not a lady, couldn't be if she tried.
Whereas Prentiss was admittedly a lady, and Venables, by the mere power
of thought, had created herself a lady.
And who was Powler? A laundry-woman! Introduced into the hotel by Mr.
Orcham, and soon caught trying to captivate Sir Henry Savott! And the
laundry-woman, an inexperienced neophyte, ignorant of the A B C of
hotels, was raised over their heads by the foreigner Mr. Cousin! And
there on the bed sat the laundry-woman triumphant, with her energetic
youth, with her unwrinkled complexion, with her damnable complacency!
The situation was intolerably unfair. It was more than human nature
could stand. Justice had ceased from the earth. God was no more in
heaven. If holy hatred could have killed, Violet would have died on the
spot.
As for Violet, she did worse than hate; she disdained. She could have
informed the rebels why they had been passed over. It was because, with
all their experience and their efficiency, they lacked charm in the
handling of visitors and in their relations with the staff. Mrs.
O'Riordan could assume charm like a new frock. And because they lacked
tact. And because they were for ever conveying to others their sense of
their own importance and breeding and sinless perfection. And because,
in the end, in the encounter with Mac, they had tried to break the chain
of authority, than which, to Mr. Orcham, nothing was more sacred. They
had committed the supreme crime. Violet had an obscure feeling that she
ought to sympathise with them, to be sorry for them. But she could not
be sorry for them. No! She disdained them. And she didn't care. She was
in no way to blame. In her inexperience she had imagined that in the
sublime and august Imperial Palace, synonym of Paradise, the horrors of
warfare were impossible, inconceivable. Innocent! She now comprehended
that there was as much human nature in the Imperial Palace as anywhere
else, even more than in the Laundry. She saw in the flesh before her the
great fact that human nature will out. She was intimidated, but no one
should guess that she was intimidated. "I won't speak. I won't give them
a chance," she said to herself.
"I should like to know what Mr. Orcham would say to this," Prentiss
remarked coldly.
Violet explained that Mr. Orcham had approved by telephone.
Suddenly Prentiss flared:
"Then it isn't Mr. Cousin! It isn't Mr. Cousin after all. Mr. Orcham
brought you here and you're his pet. Yes, he brings you here and he
pushes you up all the time. And why? Why, I should like to know."
Prentiss nearly forgot that she was a lady and had had a governess all
to herself once.
"I shan't speak," Violet repeated privately, feeling as if she were
holding back a tiger by a bit of thin string.
Prentiss had started, and Prentiss continued, and in five minutes of
destructive, eloquent diatribe, she had torn Violet's character to
pieces and thrown the pieces on the floor by the bedside.
"I shan't speak," Violet still said to herself. She pitied Prentiss and
Venables; but her pity was contemptuous.
"I don't know what _you_ mean to do, my dear," said Prentiss lovingly to
Venables. "But to-morrow morning I shall walk out of this place."
"So shall I, dear," Venables responded in her society tone; and took the
thin, veined hand of her companion.
"Well," said Violet with detachment. "You can settle that with Mr.
Cousin."
The outraged pair, exemplars of dignity both of them, drew away. The
entrance-door closed on them. They deserved what Violet was incapable of
bestowing--compassion. In an ideal world Violet would have cast herself
down at their feet, kissed Prentiss's bedroom slippers. But she only
smiled. She only said to herself, pleased with her self-control: "I
didn't speak. I didn't give them a chance." But a moment later she began
to use the most dreadful language, and in the sitting-room she lit one
of Mac's cigarettes.
CHAPTER XLII
CERIA AND SIR HENRY
I
"Who is he, that one?" murmured the boyish-faced Ceria, in French, to
his second-in-command. He had been chatting with two regular guests who
always sat at a table in a far corner of the Imperial Palace grill-room;
and when he returned towards the middle of his kingdom he saw that table
No. 33 was occupied by three men, only two of whom he recognised. One of
the two was chairman of a British film company, the other an owner of
eight or ten minor but large cinema theatres in the suburbs. Ceria was
aware that 33 had been booked for the film chairman. The
second-in-command was aware that Ceria, though the scarcely perceptible
indicative jerk of his head had been very vague, could be directing
attention to nobody but the stranger who sat between the pair of
habitués at 33. The second-in-command, shrugging his shoulders to
signify that he could not answer the question, beckoned to a head-waiter
and repeated to him Ceria's enquiry.
"That one? He ought to be Sir Henry Savott," said the head-waiter, proud
of his knowledge, and pretending to be astonished at such ignorance on
the part of his superiors.
Ceria lifted his eyebrows. He knew everything about Sir Henry Savott
except the gentleman's physical appearance. Everybody on the upper-staff
had learnt the surpassing importance of Sir Henry in the recent secret
history of the Imperial Palace.
In the restaurant of course he was a fairly familiar if infrequent
figure, and received sedulous personal service from Cappone himself. But
herein was no reason why he should be famous in the grill-room. The
grill-room and the restaurant were two different worlds. Just as there
were patrons of the restaurant to whom it never occurred to enter the
grill-room, so there were patrons of the grill-room who would not dream
of entering the restaurant--partly because of the band, which in
artistically performing high-class music interfered with conversation,
partly because the general atmosphere of the grill-room was less prim
than that of the restaurant, and partly because they met their friends
in the grill-room and would not be likely to meet them in the
restaurant.
The restaurant catered for a few truly smart people and a crowd of
well-dressed and well-behaved nonentities to whom smartness was an
ideal. The grill-room catered for active leaders of commercial,
industrial, theatrical, cinematographic and journalistic society. In the
clientèle of the grill-room there was a much larger proportion of names
and faces known to newspaper-readers than in the clientèle of the
restaurant. And quite probably the wealth in the grill-room, per man,
exceeded the wealth in the restaurant. (One regular luncher in the
former was reputed to have made twenty millions in thirty years of
ordering the labours of other individuals.) The restaurant was the haunt
of persons who existed as beautifully as they knew how. The grill-room
was the haunt of persons accustomed to command, who _did_ things or got
them done, who specialised in neither manners nor attire (except a
star-actress and a fashionable chorus-girl or so), who dared the
Atlantic six or seven times a year, who greeted one another with broad
gestures across half-a-dozen tables, and who began to look at their
watches about a quarter-past two.
Ceria moved towards 33 in the execution of his social duties, but on the
way thither he was stopped twice by visitors, and once by a head-waiter
who needed guidance in a delicate situation.
The hour was 1.30, and the grill-room, which Ceria conducted as well as
an orchestra consisting mainly of soloists can be conducted, had
scarcely one empty table. The company had arrived from various parts of
London, in many cases at some cost of time and convenience, for the site
of the Imperial Palace was better suited to butterflies than to bees;
but fashion and Ceria had made it popular with bees, who have their own
snobbishness, who will pay for it, and who had persuaded themselves that
they could not afford to lunch elsewhere than under Ceria. The noise of
chatter was at least as loud as might have been the sound of music; but
happily it was chatter and not music, it was evenly distributed, and as
it proceeded from the lunchers it did not dominate them. A strange and
exciting spectacle, the grill-room. The restaurant was a mile off, the
Floors ten miles off.
II
At length Ceria reached 33. Youthful, with a modest smile and a most
misleading air of diffidence (like others on the staff he had formed his
deportment on that of Mr. Orcham), he gave the greeting of welcome to
his two acquaintances, and bowed deferentially to Sir Henry Savott.
"If you don't know Sir Henry Savott, Ceria, you soon will do," said the
chairman of the film company, with a Scotch accent. He laughed
significantly, as one who had nothing to learn about the intimate
connection between Sir Henry and the Imperial Palace.
"Glad to know you, Ceria," said Sir Henry, and benevolently offered his
hand.
"I've never had the pleasure of seeing you here before, Sir Henry. But I
know you well by sight." Thus spoke the charming and diplomatic liar. "I
hope you like your new house. One hears that it is very wonderful."
While he felt flattered, Sir Henry reflected: "This fellow knows his
job." He said aloud that his new house might be worse. Then, in the
ensuing pause, he added: "How are the New Year's Eve arrangements
getting on? We shall be in next year before we know where we are."
Ceria replied, with a show of proud enthusiasm:
"I believe that nearly every table in the restaurant has been booked
already. Mr. Cousin told me yesterday that before Christmas comes he
will be refusing very many applications. Mr. Cappone said several
hundreds. It will be a record New Year's Eve for the Imperial Palace.
Last year was a record too."
"That's fine. I haven't reserved a table yet, but I shall do. You might
tell Cappone, if you don't mind," said Sir Henry, who had not forgotten
Evelyn's boast.
"Certainly, sir," agreed Ceria, with a new kind of a smile which said to
Sir Henry: "This will help you to understand that there is only one
Imperial Palace."
"But surely you aren't going to turn people away," Sir Henry went on
with bright, friendly astonishment and deprecation.
"What are we to do, sir? There was some suggestion of using the
ball-room as another restaurant, and clearing the tables at half-past
twelve; but of course it could not be done. People will want to eat and
drink till two o'clock at least, and people will want to begin to dance
at midnight."
"But there is this room," said Sir Henry. "Tables here for three hundred
and more. But perhaps this room _is_ to be used."
"Good idea!" the Scottish chairman interjected. "Have a separate
function here, and I'll give you the first showing of my new forty
minutes film." The notion excited him. First film ever exhibited in the
Imperial Palace! Unique publicity! Etc.
Ceria shook his head sorrowfully, for he envied Cappone on New Year's
Eve and on no other night. "We must keep this room for those who do not
like New Year's Eve dinners and suppers. And then, our visitors who are
staying in the hotel!... Impossible! Quite impossible!"
"Yes, yes," Sir Henry concurred.
The chairman was dashed, and began to fidget his very solid body.
"My maxim," said the owner of cinemas, "is the greatest pleasure for the
greatest number. You could fill this room with a special festivity.
Could you fill it with your old fogeys, and if you could, would they
spend as much money?"
"No, sir, I hardly expect to fill it, and they would not spend half as
much. _You_," he glanced at Sir Henry, with forlorn hopefulness, "you
would perhaps speak to Mr. Cousin, sir."
Sir Henry said nothing in reply.
A moment later Ceria left the table, somewhat meditative. Always he felt
himself an exile from the renowned Palace New Year's Eve celebrations,
during which the grill-room lived desolate hours enlivened by merely
sedate "souvenirs." He would have given a very great deal to be the
autocrat of a New Year festivity of his own, complete with orchestra,
cinema, balloons, streamers, missiles, caps, toy-instruments,
incandescent puddings and all.
CHAPTER XLIII
SABBATH
I
Violet was occupying Miss Maclaren's sitting-room, partly as a sign of
authority, but much more because in her position of acting
head-housekeeper, she had frequent need of a room for interviews. That
she did not use the bedroom also was a tactful admission of the
temporary nature of her seat on the high throne of the former Mrs.
O'Riordan. Her rule had so far been marked by no untoward incident. Miss
Prentiss and Miss Venables, while working out their notice under
Violet's general instruction, kept themselves to themselves and as
invisible as might be. Their desperate resolve to depart instantly and
leave the Palace in a fix had been abandoned without a word said on the
morning after Miss Maclaren's seizure and Violet's outrageous rise to
power.
Violet had refrained from any direct criticism of their performances,
preferring tranquillity to an ideal perfection. Agatha, the
head-housekeeper's pink-faced, fluffy little secretary, had acted as
go-between; Agatha had a very convenient faculty of being passionately
loyal to the occupant of the throne, no matter who the occupant was.
Miss Cass, Evelyn's grand secretary, had been fairly sympathetic to
Violet, though the absence of her master had given her too much freedom
and a somewhat extravagant sense of her own importance in the world of
the hotel. Miss Tilton, Mr. Cousin's secretary, had been very helpful,
in her dashing way; the friendship between her and Violet, based on
identity of one Christian name, was progressing. Beatrice Noakes, the
fat chambermaid on Eighth, had been extremely helpful, if extremely
loquacious. Peace had been achieved and maintained.
It was Sunday. And Sunday is more acutely Sabbatical in a fashionable
hotel than anywhere else in London, save a few homes which still keep
their islet-heads bravely raised above a flowing tide of irreligion.
Visitors to the Imperial Palace considered it incorrect to be seen in
London on Sunday--at any rate until the evening. Many left on Saturday
for the week-end, but kept their rooms, with a noble disregard of
expense. Many slipped inconspicuously away early on Sunday morning for a
day's golf or perilous motoring. Some stayed in bed. Ceria's grill-room
was a melancholy desert at the lunch hour. The restaurant was scarcely a
third full--of apologetic persons or persons who had no shame. The
entrance-hall and the foyer had a thick moral atmosphere which seemed to
deaden footfalls and reduce pace. The mere aspect of the reading-room
rendered it inviolate. The staff was more than decimated. Apparently
none of the visitors, and none of the staff except a few Latins who
attended early Mass, had any preoccupation concerning the infinite, the
mystery of the grave, the dread consequence of sin, the menace of a
flouted deity. Self-righteousness was notably diminished, almost
swallowed up in tedium. The afternoon was terrible. But in the evening,
in the vast restaurant, with jazz, Hungarian rhapsodies, jugglers,
dancers, and caviare, bisque, and multi-coloured alcohol, the Palace did
appreciably recover its weekday animation and geniality. Monday indeed
began on Sunday night.
In the head-housekeeper's sitting-room sat Violet, wearing not her raven
duty-frock, but a frock of bright hues and a hat that suited. She was
less a head-housekeeper than a prosperous daughter about to go forth and
dazzle her simple parents' home. She might have gone earlier; but the
imponderable weight of housekeeping responsibility had hugged her down.
And she was also a student of conversational French. The lesson was just
finished; the benevolent and fatherly Perosi had stood up to leave. He
was leaving with regret. His pupil's progress flattered him, and he
enjoyed her calm, sensible, matter-of-fact and smiling society. The two
were genuinely attached to one another. Perosi had two satisfactions in
his heart. Though in such condition of health as might have excused him
from the office, he had been to Mass at 8 a.m. And this lesson had been
the first lesson to be conducted entirely in French. The time of the
next lesson was being arranged when a knock at the door disturbed the
seclusion.
"Come in," Violet called instantly in a loud, clear voice. For, though
Perosi was old and Violet young and both of them were reputable beyond
slur, it was well that the appearances of respectability should fully
corroborate the fact thereof, and a moment's delay might have damaged
the appearances.
II
Ceria came in, boyish, diffident, gentle. He began:
"_Bon jour, mademoiselle, comment allez-vous?_" (For he had heard of the
French lessons, and his brain worked very swiftly.)
And Violet, despite her amazement at seeing him, answered in a sort of
dream, very nervously, but correctly:
"_Très bien, monsieur, je vous remercie. Et vous-même?_"
Perosi was enchanted. It was nothing to him that the lesson had happened
to contain those very phrases. The girl had understood French from an
unexpected visitor (what a dreadful Italian accent the young man had!),
and, keeping her presence of mind admirably, had replied in French!
But Perosi concealed his enchantment, and easily. He had a grievance
against the innocent Ceria. His greeting of the grill-room manager was
stiff, reserved and plainly inimical. The grievance had arisen thus. Two
visitors on Eighth had complained to Miss Maclaren about
breakfast-dishes theoretically hot being in practice cold. Miss Maclaren
had passed on the complaint to Perosi, perhaps rather clumsily. Perosi
knew the cause of the trouble: a defect in the electric hot-plate in the
service-lift, which defect an electrician had not contrived at once to
cure. Ceria was known to be ultimately responsible for the floor-meals,
and one of the visitors had spoken to Ceria. Perosi was convinced that,
on the evening of her seizure, Ceria had sent for Miss Maclaren in order
to discuss the matter with her. Perosi could not tolerate such a
proceeding, which was a blow to his cherished prestige and a sin against
the cardinal principle of the chain of authority. The service of meals
on the Floors was his affair, and no other person's affair. His
notorious passive antipathy to all the housekeepers (with the sole
exception of Violet) sprang from, and was fed by, real or fancied
interference by housekeepers in his exclusive domain. He held that
Ceria's going behind his back to criticise him in private confabulation
with Miss Maclaren was a monstrous act. Therefore was his demeanour
towards Ceria hostile. One result was that the gloomy air of Sunday
seemed to have penetrated into the room with the entrance of Ceria.
But no sooner had Perosi's face declared hostility to Ceria than he saw
a disturbed expression on Violet's face. He thought, alarmed: "I have
represented myself to this most sympathetic young woman as a man full of
general kindliness. I must on no account destroy the character which I
have created for myself in her eyes. More than anything I wish to stand
well with her." And he began with much Latin subtlety to change his
attitude. And as he changed it, so did his hidden feelings change
towards Ceria, and so was Violet reassured. The air of Sunday was
gradually dissipated.
"I came to enquire the latest news about Miss Maclaren," Ceria was
saying.
"Do sit down," said Violet. "I called yesterday at the hospital to leave
some flowers, but I was not allowed to see her. But Dr. Constam
telephoned me this morning that if they could do without a second
operation she would very likely pull through. If they _must_ have
another operation he wouldn't prophesy. Anyhow, the poor thing is
holding her own for the present."
"Did he tell you exactly what it is?" Ceria asked.
"He didn't. They hardly ever do, you know." Violet smiled sadly. "I
think she will pull through. People generally pull through, don't they?
Do sit down, Mr. Ceria. Won't you sit down again, Mr. Perosi?" She felt
as if she was presiding at a reception.
"But you are going out," said Ceria, sitting down.
"Not the slightest hurry."
Perosi looked at his watch.
"I must go down to Fourth," said he. "Thank you." On his way to the door
he stopped and addressed Ceria very blandly. "You were the first to see
Miss Maclaren. _Comment ça est-il arrivé? Personne n'en sait rien--à ce
qu'il parait._"
Ceria out of politeness to Violet answered in English, shaking his head:
"She telephoned that she wanted to see me. I asked her to come down to
my office. She had the attack as she came in. Very severe pain, I should
say. I helped her to sit on a chair. She would have fallen off if I had
not held her. Then I carried her to the lift. That was all. I know no
more than anybody else."
"She didn't speak?"
"She could not."
"She did not say why she came to see you?" Perosi daringly probed.
Ceria shook his head again: "Nothing. I cannot guess what she wanted."
Impossible for even Perosi not to credit the young man's sincerity. The
old man was perfectly satisfied, and once more in the full bloom of his
benevolence. He said, in a new tone suddenly and quite dramatically
warm:
"Ceria, my friend, I hear you are thinking of organising a New Year's
Eve celebration in the grill-room to accommodate visitors who have not
succeeded in obtaining tables in the restaurant. It is a fine idea,
that! At New Year's Eve there is little to do on the Floors. If I can
help you in the service, dispose of me."
Violet was thrilled by this startling announcement, which after the
rather laboured and melancholy exchanges on the subject of Miss
Maclaren's illness sounded a sort of trumpet-note of inspiring
enthusiasm. Not often did the old man show enthusiasm concerning
anything. Violet had heard the widespread news of the unprecedented
demand for tables in the restaurant on the great night; but not a word
had reached her of the scheme for bringing the grill-room into the
geography of the mighty feast. She knew nothing of the grill-room, had
never seen it.
As for Ceria, he was still more startled than his hostess. He had not
mentioned Sir Henry Savott's casual suggestion to any member of the
staff, nor at a daily conference, for the reason that he had regarded it
as too impossible to be worth discussion. Sir Henry Savott had
apparently not been ready to stand sponsor for it. And assuredly, Mr.
Cousin would not for a moment consider it. And now Ceria amazingly
learnt that somehow the scheme had got abroad in the hotel. And the
scheme blossomed magnificently afresh from the shrivelled seed in his
mind. He pictured in a flash the entire splendid fête in his grill-room,
and himself in charge of it, and his very friendly rival Cappone
outshone, not in size, but by sheer force of _chic_ and inventive
novelty; and paragraphs about it in Mr. Immerson's weekly gossip
columns. His eye shone; his cheeks flamed.
"Have you heard of it then?" he hesitatingly asked.
"I heard," said Perosi.
"How?"
Perosi gave a shrug. "I seem to have heard," he said vaguely.
He enjoyed being mysterious. The truth was that the cinema-owner,
present at the lunch two days earlier, had mentioned it, with ornamental
additions and exaggerations, to Perosi on the previous night during the
service of an intimate dinner in the suite which he was occupying in the
Palace for a week of some secret negotiation. Perosi had mistakenly
understood that the thing was as good as settled; whereas the fact was
that Mr. Cousin himself was in complete ignorance of Sir Henry Savott's
fanciful notion. Sir Henry, when in the creative mood, was capable of
throwing off half-a-dozen such coruscating sparks in half a day.
Now Ceria, the centre of the scheme, could not possibly appear to be
less well informed about it than Perosi, who had only 'heard' of it.
"It will be discussed at the conference to-morrow morning," he said, as
one who was at the heart of the matter, deciding on the instant to
introduce it at the conference himself. He took Perosi's offer as a
significant omen. Perosi, though a minor deity in the pantheon of the
Palace, had a prestige beyond his rank. He was accepted by his superiors
as a serious and sagacious person. Both Mr. Orcham and Mr. Cousin
listened with respect to his opinion, whether they had sought it or not.
He had had great experience of hotel work; and before Ceria had dawned
on the Palace, Perosi had been a valued head-waiter in the grill-room.
But for lack of ambition, lack of personal style, and a certain
superficial surliness of manner, he might have risen very high in the
Palace.
What puzzled Ceria was that Mr. Cousin, the scheme having as it seemed
been on the carpet for two days, had not summoned him into the
managerial office. He guessed that it must be Sir Henry who had
mentioned the wonderful idea, his own, to Mr. Cousin. And an idea of Sir
Henry's was not one to be lightly cast aside.
Perosi departed, in full lustre.
III
Violet wondered why Ceria outstayed Perosi. He had received the
information about Mac which he had come for. And Mr. and Mrs. Powler, at
home in Renshaw Street on the south side of the Thames, would grow
impatient for the arrival of their marvellous daughter. Still, Violet,
if she had had a magic power to choose between sending Ceria away and
keeping him, would have kept him yet awhile. She liked him. She liked
his presence, the innocent, diffident, unworldly look on his face. She
was attracted to him, not as a male, but as a human being. So sensible,
so ingenuous, so agreeable to behold! Similarly she liked old Perosi. So
grim, so benign. She liked _people_. She liked to know about them and to
understand them. This was only her second meeting with Ceria. At the
first, she had immediately appreciated his concern for the stricken Mac
(though there was something nonchalant in it), and the discretion of his
disappearance from Mac's room when he could no longer be useful. She
liked to hear him talk his very correct and fluent English, in which
every sound was subtly foreign: so that he could not have said even
'knife' without betraying his foreign birth.
Of course his foreignness was a vague barrier dividing them. Foreign,
full of mystery, he would always be. But she did not object to the
barrier, because she had no wish for intimacy with him. To enjoy his
acquaintance was sufficient for her. What did not present itself to her
mind was the fact that, just as Ceria was foreign to her, so was she
foreign to him. Exotic, elusive. They chatted about nothing,
Sundayishly. Their talk was simple, and it was cheerful. But for Violet,
beneath the flow of the conversation, there was an under-current of
sadness for the tragic plight of Mac. She fancied that she could detect
the same sadness beneath the social tone of Ceria's sentences.
She was wrong. Ceria was certainly preoccupied, but not with the fate of
Miss Maclaren. His mind was busy upon the dream of the possibilities of
a New Year's Eve fête in his grill-room. Violet had a very imperfect
conception of the importance of New Year's Eve in the corporate life of
the Imperial Palace. She had never seen a fashionable, luxurious New
Year's Eve fête, and never imagined one. She was perhaps aware, from
rumours and glimpses, that tremendous preparations were afoot, and that
the entire hotel was slowly gathering its energies together for a grand
climacteric of display designed orgiastically to receive the New Year
into the infinite succession of years. But as regards the esoteric
spirit of the effort, she belonged to an ignorant and uninitiated laity.
"You are going out," said Ceria suddenly, without rising, and as though
he had not made this surprising discovery before.
"Not yet," she replied. "Are you generally here on Sunday afternoons? I
thought that----"
"I am never here on Sunday afternoons, and not often on Sunday evenings.
But my mother and my sisters went away this morning to the Riviera. They
would have gone to Italy, our home, but there might have been
complications for the return. They are not naturalised British subjects
like I am. My eldest sister has been unwell."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Not ill. Unwell. It is the damp climate. They have gone for a month. My
house is empty. You understand--the sadness of an empty home. I could
not tolerate it alone. After lunch I stayed here. _Laisser aller!_" He
smiled plaintively, as it were appealing for sympathetic comprehension.
"What a pity you did not call earlier then!" Violet smiled. "I might
have given you some tea."
He thanked her deprecatingly. Mac's illness was the pretext for his
call; no more. He had called because he had lost three women endeared to
him by habit of life; he was accustomed to the companionship of women,
this deferential functionary of whom his patrons thought that the
grill-room was his sole and everlasting world; and in the arid desert of
the hotel on Sunday afternoon he had sought an oasis--a woman's room. He
had liked Violet for the calm efficiency of her reception of Miss
Maclaren's tortured body. He had liked her soothing presence. Her
expression and her gestures had remained in his memory. And now he liked
a new expression on her face, an expression--which he did not know was
characteristic--of kindly alacrity to observe and consider
sympathetically any phenomenon that might offer itself to her
cognisance. He was offering himself to her cognisance. And her smile was
responsive.
"Do you live near here?" she asked. "I suppose you do, because of
getting home at nights."
He told her exactly where his home lay: a little beyond Hampstead. With
an increasing naïve eagerness he described his home, his mother, his
elder sister and his younger sister, his garden, the tennis-court--with
not enough space at the ends for truly scientific back-line play. He was
so graphic in his mild fervour that Violet _saw_ his home and the old
lady and the two girls. Did the ladies feel exiled in North London? Did
they not long for Italy? Not a bit. They were devoted to London. They
loved the English and the English character and ways. There was no
tedium in London. Both Emilia and Daria spoke English better than
himself, Ceria. The old lady spoke a little English. But at home they
spoke nothing but Italian. They had an Italian maid-cook, and the
cuisine was strictly Italian. The English were wonderful. The English
domestic cuisine, however.... Well, they had experienced it, in a
boarding-house at Brixton for a few weeks. The stream of home-detail
slackened, trickled. Ceria rose.
"I must go. May I telephone you for news of Miss Maclaren to-morrow?"
Violet nodded.
"I do hope your New Year's Eve dinner will be arranged," she said
politely, not quite realising how much the fête meant to him.
"Ah yes!" he sighed, with Latin pessimism. Then brightly: "I was so glad
that Perosi favoured it. Perosi is listened to here in the Palace. He is
a historical monument. If when he sees Mr. Cousin he should chance to
say a word--it would have influence."
"Really?"
"Yes, yes. I have noticed before."
"I shall tell him he must. I shall tell him." Violet's tone was
confident, almost imperious, the tone of a woman who knows her feminine
power. She rose. She seemed to be suddenly inspired with enthusiasm for
Ceria's scheme. "I shall tell him to-night when I come back."
"How nice of you!" Ceria's eyes shone. So did Violet's.
A quarter of a minute after his departure she was following him down the
lighted corridor. She ran into her bedroom at the end, switched on the
electricity, put on her coat, snatched her bag, examined her face,
switched off the electricity. She was out of the hotel. She walked
quickly, past the dim groves and water of St. James's Park, past Queen
Anne houses, the Abbey, hospitals, grandiose Government offices, to the
corner of the Embankment and Westminster Bridge, and sprang on to a tram
with the right illuminated sign on its forehead. Buildings were smaller,
roads wider and straighter, motor-cars fewer, costumes and suits less
smart. The tram slid roaring by the Laundry, and the Laundry touchingly
recalled to her what seemed like her distant youth. Cyril Purkin was no
doubt in his little house there. South London was another world, the
world, again, of her far-distant youth. Condescending to it, she yet
loved it, because she knew every yard of it and it was her home.
The tram stopped. She jumped down. Tiny houses on the broad
thoroughfare. She walked a little under the recurrent glare of the
street-lamps; then turned to the left, then to the right. Tiniest
houses, some lit, some dark, some with names, some without. She halted
at a low wooden gate opening into a front-garden as big as a
counterpane. One projecting window; slits of light at the edges of the
three blinds. A light over the door. The moon is not farther from the
earth than Violet was then from the Imperial Palace. She rang the
tinkling old bell briskly. She tapped on the door. Her father would as
usual say something faintly sardonic about her artificial complexion.
Her mother would remark on her new gloves. How slow were these parents!
The door opened. Her mother! Her mother kissed her as she stood on the
doorstep, looking with strange enquiry at this new daughter. How narrow
and stuffy and old was the lobby! Her father in his old, creased,
house-jacket appeared at the door of the sitting-room.
"I must positively be back at the old Pally by ten o'clock, children,"
she exclaimed.
It was her father who had somewhat derisively attached the diminutive
"Pally" to the greatest luxury hotel in the world. South London had to
maintain its self-respect.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE VAMP
I
Violet found a mild and soothing satisfaction in the short Sunday
evening visit to her home; but as she waved a good night to her parents
standing side by side in the front doorway, her father puffing at his
pipe, the thought in her dutiful daughterly mind was:
"Well, that's done!"
Her father and mother were not really interested in the Palace, and her
father's comments on the things she told him showed no comprehension of
either their importance or their significance. Her mother was
inquisitive about the details of Miss Maclaren's seizure, but to Violet
her curiosity seemed morbid and her prejudice against hospitals almost
childish. Both parents had been much more interested in the life of the
Laundry, probably because they saw it from the street several times a
week. What really did interest them was the daily functioning of the
little home: the enormities of the charwoman who 'came in' for half a
day on alternate days, the caprices of the kitchen range, the
inexplicable peeling of paint on the back-door, the new wireless in the
next house, the kittening of the cat. They assumed that Violet would be
eager for every tiniest morsel of house-gossip.
Her father had of course never been inside the Palace, had never dreamed
of going inside, could not conceive of any circumstances which might
lead to his going inside. Her mother had never even seen the hotel, or,
if she had long ago seen it, had not noticed it. She spoke of making a
trip to look at it, as she might have spoken of a trip to New York. The
hotel was far beyond their range. Violet was miraculously rising in the
hotel. The hotel, for them, was a place existing solely in order that
Violet might rise in it.
As for Violet, this excursion into South London--she had made several
before--was the first to awaken her fully to the quick growth of her
affection for the Palace. As she journeyed eastward in the tram she was
positively impatient to be back on the Floors with all their endless
small surprises and anxieties; quite ready to be immersed again in a sea
of trouble--what some people would call trouble but she wouldn't. And in
particular she was impatient to talk to Mr. Perosi. She had convinced
herself that by talking to Perosi she might help to help the Palace
towards a greater glory on New Year's Eve. Her sole reason for returning
to the hotel not later than ten o'clock was information received from
Perosi himself that he would be leaving the hotel at that hour on a
visit to a friend at the Majestic. Strictly, she had been entitled to a
week-end off, but a truly earnest temporary head-housekeeper could not
think of absenting herself for so long a period from the supervision of
the huge organism--especially as she had had word from Mr. Cousin that
her salary would be raised during the term of her high office. But for
the desire to have an interview with Perosi, however, she would not have
returned till midnight.
Mr. Maxon, the staff-manager's second-in-command, was fussing about
restlessly in the dark staff-entrance, though nobody was clocking-in and
nobody was clocking-out. Naturally Mr. Maxon did not expect a
head-housekeeper to clock-in. On the contrary he very amiably opened the
wicket for her and expressed his view that the night was fine, with
which Violet very amiably agreed. It occurred to her that her father
would have made an excellent assistant staff-manager. She enquired of
Mr. Maxon whether Mr. Perosi had left the hotel. He had not. But she met
Perosi, strangely clad in a fawn-coloured lounge-suit and a brown
overcoat and soft hat to match, in the main basement-corridor, he having
descended in a service-lift. She stopped him. They were alone in the
stony corridor.
"I'm so glad I've caught you," she said, with a calm, gentle smile. She
had intended that smile to be captivating, but at the moment of
composing the smile she was too proud, or too honest, to use the wile
which she had contemplated. She was disappointed with herself. She
thought: "Why can't I do it? Why am I so stiff?"
For she had set her mind on 'vamping'--there was no other word--the
benevolent grim old gentleman, on demonstrating the influence over him
which she believed she possessed. According to Ceria, Perosi's opinions
about hotel-policy had weight. Ceria desired that the weight of Perosi's
opinions should turn the scale in favour of a special New Year's Eve
fête in the grill-room, and had she not said to Ceria, of Perosi: "I
shall tell him he must"? Her instinct was to help Ceria. Ceria was a
child, and she wanted to give him a toy. Ceria was so charming, so
innocent, so diffident, so pathetic, so bereft of his womenkind. Ceria
would have to sleep through Christmas and the New Year in his desolate
home. He deserved compensation, and Violet was determined that if she
could bring it about he should have the dazzling compensation of a fête
in his grill-room.
"_Qu'est-ce que c'est? Vous me le direz en français_," said the French
master, quizzically, rather alarmingly. His experience of housekeepers
had endowed him with a sort of second-sight; and by nature he was
suspicious.
Violet shook her head to the command to say her say in French. Perosi
knew that he was ordering the impossible of his pupil.
"You remember what you said to Mr. Ceria this afternoon in my room about
that scheme for a New Year's Eve dinner in the grill-room?" Perosi
nodded cautiously. "Well, after you left he talked about it. He seems
frightfully keen on it, but he's afraid they'll turn it down. Now I was
just thinking--everybody in this place knows what influence you have
here, and I was just thinking that if you did get a chance to put in a
word to Mr. Cousin, perhaps you might.... You see what I mean. It's
only an idea that crossed my mind. And everybody _does_ know your
influence. I've often heard of it."
Not a very clever speech, she thought. Lame! And the last sentence was a
gross and deliberate exaggeration. But she smiled again, looking up at
the man with an appeal in her eyes.
II
Perosi's gaunt face softened. She thought: "After all I'm doing this
fairly well."
Perosi had feared some request for a favour the granting of which might
upset the strictness of the ritual of his branch of the Floors-service.
You never knew with these women, even the most sensible of them!
Instead, Violet had flattered him. It was true that he had influence. He
was nobody. He was only the head-floors-waiter. But he had influence
with the mighty--and incidentally his post of head-floors-waiter was an
exceedingly important one, if you looked at it properly! Perhaps none
more important under Mr. Cousin!
"No!" he said gently, hardening his face again. "I shall not speak to
Mr. Cousin."
"Oh!" Violet exclaimed timidly. She really did feel like a sweet young
girl at the mercy of a stern and powerful male.
"But," Perosi went on, relenting with grim roguishness. "I shall speak
to Mr. Orcham."
"Mr. Orcham! But----"
"Mr. Orcham has telegraphed from Boulogne that he will be here to-night.
Victoria 10.47. I've only heard this minute. If they'd let me know
early, I should not have changed my clothes. Now I must change back
again, because when Mr. Orcham returns after an absence I take his
orders myself. So I shall not go to the Majestic. I take just a little
walk to the river and back, to breathe. That is why I go out earlier
than I said. I shall see Mr. Orcham in his room, and if I can I shall
say a word. He likes me to take his orders myself--I mean for a meal, if
he is hungry. I shall certainly see him."
"That's splendid!" said Violet. "And it's very nice of you." She smiled
gratefully, admiringly: final gesture of the vamp successful.
Perosi went off, buttoning his overcoat and turning up the collar.
But Violet was vaguely disturbed by the news of Mr. Orcham's imminent
arrival. Mr. Orcham was great and terrible. He had been terrible about
Venables and Prentiss. Still, he had confirmed her astonishing
appointment as temporary head-housekeeper. He was a man about whom
nothing could be prophesied. Violet had a notion that the mice might
have played more harmoniously if the cat had not returned so soon.
CHAPTER XLV
THE PANJANDRUM'S RETURN
I
Evelyn, at a quarter before midnight, had been in his castle for
thirty-five minutes. His mood was that of a returned traveller for whom
work and anxieties have been accumulating during his absence. He was
relieved and even glad to be back, but he shrank from the consequences
of being back; he shirked the burden awaiting his broad shoulders. Also
he was self-conscious as a supreme ruler re-entering a kingdom which has
been left in charge of inferior beings. He had desired to meet nobody of
importance until Monday morning. The prospect of effusive, deferential
greetings from this person and from that as he came through the
revolving doors into the great hall, answering enquiries about his
health and his journey, responding suitably to expressions of pleasure
at the sight of him, listening to hints of urgent matters which would
immediately demand his notice, making polite enquiries about the health
and the doings and the happiness of other people--the prospect of all
this was more than he felt himself able to bear.
Call it weakness, cowardice, what you please, the panjandrum had chosen
to re-enter his kingdom by the staff-entrance, to the intense
astonishment of Mr. Maxon, who of course had attributed the caprice to
every motive except the right foolish one. He had driven to the hotel
quite alone, impatiently abandoning Oldham and baggage at Victoria. He
had ascended to Seventh partly by a service-lift and partly by walking.
But even so, sneaking into his own house like a thief, he had not been
able to avoid being somehow enveloped in the intangible blanket-folds of
the hotel atmosphere. On the way up he had caught two or three bars of
the orchestra far distant in the restaurant. Same old routine,
hackneyed, desolating: so it seemed to him. People would be dancing and
guzzling in the restaurant on the night of judgment and doom. But that
must be the new Paris-American band which Jones-Wyatt, the
Bands-and-cabaret-manager, had engaged. Well, he did not very much like
it. He could not possibly judge it with fairness, but his inclination
was not to approve it, not to approve anything. He was in a
hypercritical state of mind. Certain phenomena at the staff-entrance and
in the basement-corridor had ruffled him, though he had said nothing
about them to Maxon. He had passed unseen along the main corridor of
Seventh, opened his door, slipped inside his castle, shut the door. He
was safe. None would dare to disturb him. Yes, Perosi would dare to
disturb. He knew the ritual on these rare occasions. Perosi regarded
himself as a privileged person. And Perosi had dared to disturb him. He
had to be pleasant and chatty with Perosi. He would not eat. No, not
even the least snack. He had dined on the train from Folkestone. To
placate Perosi, to save Perosi's gnarled face, he had asked for a
liqueur brandy and hot water.
Serving the beverage with marvellous quickness, Perosi had shown an
exasperating tendency to fall into hotel-gossip. Evelyn had bravely and
nobly smiled, while attempting to check the tendency. Perosi had
remarked that he had been very interested to hear of the project of a
separate New Year's Eve festivity in the grill-room. Then it was that
Evelyn had performed a miracle of self-control and deceitfulness. One of
his fibs without words. Neither by telephone nor by letter on his
journeyings had he been vouchsafed one single syllable about this
astounding project of a separate New Year's Eve festivity in the
grill-room. Nevertheless he had replied mildly and casually to Perosi:
"Yes, yes," as if he had been familiar with the project for weeks, as if
he himself had invented the project. And Perosi, hoodwinked, and
perceiving that the moment was inopportune for a friendly discussion,
had left the room. "I'm a bit tired, Perosi," Evelyn had said. "Good
night. Thank you."
Then Evelyn had heard baggage being thudded into his bedroom through the
bedroom-door. By now every member of the staff would be apprised of his
advent. There was Maxon. Before he had reached Seventh everybody would
have learnt that the panjandrum had come--and by what strange entrance!
He had sat awhile lounging in his soft travelling-suit, thinking of all
his hotel-inspections, on the whole satisfactory, in various cities, and
of the suddenly decided tiresome journey and the rough Channel voyage.
He had meant to sleep one night in Boulogne, a sympathetic port, just
for change and rest. But when the train stopped at the harbour station
he had felt that after all he could not tolerate a night in Boulogne,
and his consequent counter-orders and orders had considerably overset
the exhausted Oldham. And it was not true that he had dined in the
Pullman crowded with peevish passengers. He had only pretended to dine.
The Channel, following many days of fatigue, had somewhat seriously
deranged him, and indeed was partly responsible for his captious,
sensitive temper.
Having finished the soothing brandy and water, he bent down and unlaced
his brown boots, which for hours had been slightly incommoding him.
Then, restless, he went into the bathroom. The bedroom-door was open. He
stared at Oldham stooping, straightening himself, sorting clothes,
handling them gently, almost lovingly. Oldham knew well that there would
be no respite for a valet until every garment and belonging was in its
proper place and the trunk and the two suit-cases hidden away. A valet
was not entitled to be fatigued by journeys, deranged by the Channel. A
valet had to be superhuman. And Oldham really did seem to be superhuman
in those moments. The truth was that on the journey he had made a
tranquillising decision, a decision not uninfluenced by the loss of
sixty pounds odd, all unknown to Evelyn, in a Paris _tripot_.
"I suppose, sir," he said, as it were dreamily, with his back to Evelyn.
"I suppose you wouldn't care for me to withdraw my notice?"
Suggestion startling to Evelyn, among whose chief worries was the horrid
thought of having to replace Oldham and train his successor....
Silence.... Oldham secretly trembled at his own boldness. Evelyn
ought to have felt comforted. But he did not. Instead, he reflected
bitterly: "Inconstant ass! Coward! He's afraid. And he doesn't know his
own mind. Why the devil should I let him withdraw his notice? Fancies
himself as a retail tobacconist, and then funks it! But I might have
guessed he'd give in when it came to the point!"
When the silence had continued for a few minutes, he said very drily:
"We'll talk about that to-morrow. I shall have to think it over." He
added, commandingly: "Be as quick as you can. I want to go to bed."
"Yes, sir."
II
Evelyn returned to the sitting-room, wearing pumps, and murmuring
inaudibly to himself. A breath-taking sight confronted him: two letters
lying on the centre-table. He was outraged by the sight, which strained
to the snapping point his already exacerbated nerves. It was a rigid
rule of the Palace that no correspondence should in any circumstances be
delivered in his private rooms, which were held by him to be sacred. His
office was the only proper place for correspondence, and for any
documents relating to business. Also, he had determined not to touch
business until the next day. He desired, and would positively have,
nothing but peace. He impulsively opened the door and called out:
"Oldham!"
"Yes, sir." In response the man came as far as the bathroom.
"Who has put these letters here?" Evelyn's tone was very curt and
imperious. Yet he admitted to himself that obviously Oldham was not in a
position to answer the question.
"I really couldn't say, sir," said Oldham, placatory because he now
wanted more and more to keep his situation.
"They have been put here since I went into the bedroom to speak to you.
Someone must have brought them here." Evelyn knew even as he made it
that this was a silly remark.
"Yes, sir."
"You don't know who did it?"
"No, sir."
"Well, go and find out--at once."
"Very good, sir," said Oldham, thinking to himself: "He's just told me
to hurry up with the unpacking and here he pushes me off to do something
else! What a life!" But he still wanted to keep his situation.
Evelyn firmly decided that he would not read the letters. No! He would
send them downstairs to his office unopened and deal with them in the
ordinary course the next morning. Then, glancing at one of the
envelopes, he recognised the handwriting of Sir Henry Savott, and had a
qualm. What could be wrong? He rather violently tore at the envelope.
"My dear Orcham. This is to tell you that my friend Mr. Oliver Oxford,
managing director of the Carlyle Oxford British Films Company, has an
idea to suggest to you for the proposed New Year's Eve affair in your
grill-room. Please listen to him. I think it was I who first thought of
a special affair in the grill-room for New Year's Eve. Oxford is a
friend of mine. Yours."
Curse the fellow! Trying to interfere with the management of the Palace!
And all because, the hotel-merger being practically arranged, he was now
turning to film-mergers. Evidently for reasons of his own the fellow was
anxious to oblige this Oxford person. Of all the impudence! He, Evelyn,
would show Savott what was what! The other envelope was large and of an
ornamental nature. It bore on its face the words: "Carlyle Oxford
British." Extraordinary, despicable, how these English film companies
would imitate American companies, even in their titles! But Carlyle,
Evelyn knew, was an American. He read the second letter. What a
signature of self-conscious flourishes! The letter afforded to Evelyn
the virginity of an absolutely new kind of silent film, of which Carlyle
Oxford British had the highest hopes, and in which they had an
unparalleled confidence, for use in the Palace Grill-room on New Year's
Eve, if Evelyn cared to avail himself of it. And would Evelyn come and
see the film in the private theatre of Carlyle Oxford British in Lisle
Street, at any time convenient to himself?
What _was_ this grill-room scheme? It appeared to be very much in the
air. First old Perosi. Then Savott. Then this Oxford--no doubt a Hebrew.
Evelyn was clearly the only person in the world who knew nothing about
it. He lit a cigarette. Why did not Oldham come back? What was the
nincompoop up to? Surely it was a simple enough thing to find out who
had introduced correspondence into the sitting-room! Evelyn went to the
telephone, and demanded Mr. Cousin. He had no wish to speak to Mr.
Cousin. He wanted to know whether Mr. Cousin was on duty. Mr. Cousin was
not supposed to be on duty on Sunday nights; but Evelyn thought that the
Manager, aware that his Director was returning, might have had the grace
to be available. The telephone answer was that Mr. Cousin was away till
Monday. Naturally! There was always something subtly independent about
Cousin. Evelyn had been in search of a grievance. He found it. Then he
telephoned to his secretary, Miss Cass. He knew that Miss Cass was on
holiday for the week-end, but still he thought that the girl might by
some magic have contrived to be present to welcome him. The reply from
the hotel-exchange was that the Director's office was closed. Another
grievance.
At last Oldham came back, flurried. He had failed in his mission.
Perosi, a waiter, a valet, the liftman, several pages, a chambermaid: he
had carried out a thorough investigation, and all these people denied
any complicity in the mysterious delivery of letters into the castle.
Evelyn had a gleam of light.
"Find out if a Mr. Oliver Oxford is staying here."
"Very good, sir." In a quarter of a minute Oldham conveyed the answer.
Mr. Oliver Oxford was staying in the Palace. Suite 743. Quite near to
Evelyn's castle. He guessed the solution of the enigma. Mr. O. O.,
having heard of Evelyn's arrival, had written the letter and delivered
both letters himself. No doubt he had knocked, received no answer, and
stepped impudently into the room. Evelyn noticed that Savott's letter
was dated several days earlier, and had probably been waiting to be used
in the presumptuous Hebrew's own good time.
The image of Violet Powler swam into his mind, possibly drawn there by a
subconscious yearning to be tranquillised. He was accustomed to think of
Miss Powler as a tranquillising creature; he had never forgotten, and he
never recalled without pleasure, the scene at the Laundry when she had
handled so gently the colour-blind woman. All the Floors were now in
charge of the inexperienced Miss Powler, with his approval. An audacious
experiment. But during his absence had he received from Cousin any
criticisms, any complaints, of her performance? Not one. Had Cousin
shown the least misgiving as to her capacity? No. Cousin's letters and
his nightly telephoning had been salted with hints of the inadequacy of
other members of the upper-staff; but Miss Powler's efficiency had not
once been arraigned. He looked at the clock. Three minutes to twelve. He
picked up the telephone, then hesitated. If this was an early night for
her she would be gone to bed, but if not there were still three minutes
before, according to rules, she was entitled to leave duty. He asked the
Exchange for her. In a moment he heard her voice.
"Mr. Orcham?"
"Speaking. I've just returned, Miss Powler. I didn't want to trouble you
at this time of the night, but I was rather anxious to have the latest
news about Miss Maclaren. How is she to-day?"
"Not out of danger yet, sir."
"Oh! Sorry to hear that! I was hoping----" He stopped.
"It's rather a long story, sir."
"I say," said Evelyn in a tone more colloquial, "I wonder if you'd mind
very much coming down now and telling me. I'm in my room--not my
office."
"Certainly, sir."
Why had he invited her to come down to him, especially as he really had
little to learn about Miss Maclaren's illness? Well, her voice had
soothed him. It was like a balm to his sore nerves. It was the most
soothing (yet firm) voice within his memory of women's voices. His wife;
Mrs. O'Riordan, a wonderful old girl extremely capable, but no consoler
for a weary man; Miss Maclaren, always consciously bearing a weight of
responsibility; Miss Cass devoted enough and pleasant enough, but
steely; Venables, Prentiss and others, nobodies who invariably by their
prim voices raised a barrier between themselves and him. Ah! Cousin
might stick to his lawful rights; Miss Cass might gad away for the
week-end; but his favourite, Miss Powler, his discovery, his
candidate--she was at her post! He might have known it. Miss Powler was
not an employee to be fussy and exacting about hours. Not she! A tap at
the door.
III
She came into the room, quietly smiling. Her appearance startled him;
for instead of the regulation housekeeper's black, she was wearing a
bright-coloured frock. The psychological effect on Evelyn of this simple
frock was considerable. It pulled him from his chair, impelled him a few
steps across the room and thrust forward his right arm.
"Excuse my dress, please. I've just been home to see mother and father,"
she said as they shook hands.
"It's a very nice dress," he said, and pointed to a chair. "Do sit down.
It's you who must excuse _me_, sending for you like this. Now tell me
the whole story."
She sat. He said to himself that she was surprisingly changed--for the
better. Her expression had the same placid benevolence, but she had
gained tremendously in ease of manner, in worldliness. She must have
been continuously learning from visitors. He had thought before that she
might be anybody's daughter. He thought now that she might be anybody's
daughter--except a small-town traveller's; she might be a peer's
daughter, or an artist's, or a stockbroker's. Of course she had not
quite Lady Milligan's style; but a quality was hers which the Yorkshire
gentlewoman lacked: poise. At a heavy expense of nervous energy, Lady
Milligan gallantly kept a semblance of poise--not the real thing; and at
intervals she lost even the semblance. Whereas Miss Powler could be
genuinely calm for ever and ever at no expense of spirit.
Violet related briefly the tragic tale of Mac from beginning to end.
"Um!" was Evelyn's only comment, but he put a lot of sympathy into it.
He took a cigarette. Then it struck him that he ought to offer Miss
Powler a cigarette. But he offered the cigarette to the bright frock. At
any rate, if Violet had been in official black he would not have dreamt
of such an approach. He made it solely for the sake of his own good
opinion of himself as a polite man. He was sure that she would refuse
the cigarette, and that she did not smoke. She was not the sort of girl
who smokes; nor the sort of girl who, if she smokes, would care to smoke
in the presence of her employer.
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thank you," said Violet.
He was startled, for the second time. He had to hold a match for her.
The interview modulated into a new key.
"What's _your_ idea about this scheme for a special New Year's Eve
dinner in the grill-room?" he asked, rather impulsively: partly because
the scheme was like a bluebottle in his mind, and partly to cover a
slight self-consciousness concerning the cigarette. He thought, and he
was bound to think: "Supposing anyone came in and saw her and me smoking
together, and her in that frock, and the time after midnight, especially
as I sneaked into the hotel. Of course no one will come in, but
supposing----"
Violet made no reply.
"You've heard of it?" he said.
"Yes, I have heard of it." She looked at him through the smoke and gave
a smile.
"Who told you?" he was on the point of saying; but he did not utter the
words. No decent employer ought to put such an ambiguous question to an
employee; it would have had the air of an invitation to tell tales.
"I don't know anything about those things," Violet went on cautiously.
To her there seemed to be a faint note of hostility to the scheme in Mr.
Orcham's voice. "_This scheme!_" Had his tone been different she might
have hinted at Mr. Ceria's passionate eagerness for the scheme, might
have shown some sympathy for Mr. Ceria's cause. "I'm quite a beginner
here. I don't know half enough about the Floors yet, and as for anything
else----" She smiled again, lightly, as one who is confident of being
fully understood. Then she said: "I expect they're waiting for you to
settle it. I'm sure everybody's glad you've come back. We've all been
rather lost without you. Mr. Cousin was saying only the day before
yesterday he hoped you'd be back soon."
"You've been seeing Mr. Cousin pretty often?"
"Not seeing him. On the telephone. I've had to ask him about dozens of
things. He's been very kind to me. No one could have been nicer."
"Well," said Evelyn, "Mr. Cousin's the man you have to deal with, not
me, you know."
"Yes, I do know."
Evelyn reflected that never before had any housekeeper spoken as Miss
Powler spoke of Cousin. All the other housekeepers had been wrong.
Cousin was a good fellow, and he had been quite justified in not
upsetting his own arrangements for the sake of being available on the
chance of Evelyn wanting to see him. Evelyn was a fine judge of tact.
His opinion that Miss Powler had an unusual measure of tact was
confirmed. So they had all of them missed the presence of the
panjandrum! The panjandrum was soothed--either by the cigarette or by
the tact.
He threw the cigarette into the fire, two-thirds smoked. Violet was
smoking hers very slowly. He was impatient for her to finish. He had a
desire to make some enquiries about her experiences as head-housekeeper.
But he thought that to talk professional shop with her when he had
invited her down to get news of Miss Maclaren would be taking an
improper advantage of the occasion. Still, conversation had to be
maintained, and his social duty was to maintain it.
"Heard anything about your old home?" he asked.
"My old home? Oh! You mean the Laundry?" She laughed outright. "No.
Except that Miss Brury is getting on splendidly. Mr. Purkin came up to
see Mr. Cousin, and I happened to meet him. He told me so himself."
"Excellent! Excellent! I had an idea she would. That change we made is
working out very well." A pleasant appreciative innuendo in his voice
that she, Violet, was giving satisfaction.
"I'm so glad you think so, sir."
The first time she had said 'sir' in the interview.
There was another lull in the talk; he began to feel agreeably sleepy;
but he could not dismiss her until her cigarette was consumed.
Fortunately he happened to hit on a new topic.
"How is the French getting on?"
"Very slowly," she replied. "But Mr. Perosi is a very good teacher."
"And does the very good teacher think that progress is slow, or is that
only your own idea?"
"He says it's pretty quick, considering. But to me it does seem terribly
slow. Really!"
"I know the trouble I had," Evelyn mused aloud. "And even now, when I'm
said to be mighty fluent, I often think I've done no more than scratch
the surface of the infernal language. If you ask me, French is the most
difficult language in the world--except English."
They went on talking. Evelyn reflected. Beneath the current of
conversation he had been thinking that whatever might occur on the
Floors he would keep this girl in her present post, for she was a born
lubricator, the enemy of all friction. He had a mazy dream, if the
dangerously sick woman ever came back, of allotting a pension to Miss
Maclaren so that she should not stand in the way of Miss Powler. But the
mention of French started another dream. He had found a lot of friction
at the Minerva Hotel at Cannes, even in the slack, wet pre-Christmas
season. Why not transfer Miss Powler to Cannes as soon as her French
grew to be practically serviceable? She would go, if asked. She was not
one to jib at a new experience. Another hazardous experiment; but
wherein lay the advantage of being supreme autocrat of a luxury hotel
merger if you could not try hazardous experiments? He would be told that
nobody had ever heard of an English housekeeper in a French hotel, that
she could not possibly "shake down" with a French staff, etc. Nonsense!
And anyhow, she would shake down with the clientèle, which was
ninety-five per cent. British and American. To the clientèle she would
be balm, a rock of refuge, an oasis, an all-comprehending angel,
everything that was sympathetic.... And yet--no! The Imperial Palace
had first call, and it could not spare her.
She rose, and carefully dropped the cigarette-end into the fire. As she
gave him an interrogative glance he rose too.
"Well," he said. "It's late. I mustn't keep you."
"Well," she said, with urbanity but also with sturdy affirmation of a
hard fact. "Our hours are very long."
Her eyes met his. "Stomach that, my boy!" he said to himself. He nodded,
as it were casually, but he was somewhat dashed by the direct blow. He
said to himself: "I admire her for that."
"Thank you so much," she said.
He took her hand nonchalantly, but with a fake-nonchalance.
"You're very kind and I do appreciate it," she added.
There was such an undeferential sincerity of goodwill and gratitude in
her voice and smile that he was secretly overcome. No housekeeper, no
member of the female staff, had ever used that tone to him. None, except
Mrs. O'Riordan, had thrown down the barrier of status, of official rank,
as Violet did then. And though there had been no barrier between him and
Mrs. O'Riordan, though Mrs. O'Riordan could charm and blandish with the
best, there had always been something formidable, daunting, in her
social demeanour towards him, even at its sweetest and most alluring. He
privately glowed with pleasure at Violet's unstudied humanity. He felt
that he could look happily and confidently at the future. The
manipulation of a chain of vast hotels seemed easier than before. He was
enheartened.
Oldham stepped into the sitting-room through the bathroom door.
"I beg pardon, sir," said Oldham clumsily, though he had done nothing
which needed to be pardoned.
"Just in time," Evelyn reflected, thinking of the cigarette. A near
shave! His attitude to Oldham in the bedroom had been unreasonable, if
not unjust. Hence he felt a grudge against Oldham, and had an impulse to
continue in unreason and injustice. But the simple goodwill of Violet
had aroused and enlivened his own goodwill. Also he would not for worlds
have displayed himself to Violet as less than the perfect employer and
man. The truth was that he was affected precisely as old Perosi had been
affected in the afternoon.
"What is it, Oldham? Come in," he said benevolently.
"I've finished all the unpacking, sir. Is there anything else, sir?"
"No, thanks," said Evelyn. "Thanks very much. Sorry to have kept you
up."
"Thank you, sir. Good night, sir. Good night, miss."
Oldham departed. Violet departed. Evelyn went to bed joyous. Miss Powler
must certainly have approved his demeanour to Oldham.
CHAPTER XLVI
ANOTHER CONFERENCE
I
The next morning Evelyn reigned afresh in the directorial office; and
Reggie Dacker, his dandiacal fellow-director (usually referred to as the
'alter ego' of the panjandrum), and Miss Cass, his authoritative
secretary, were with him and under his law. Despite untimely wintry
weather, he was cheerful, brisk, and quite in the mood for reigning.
Before going to bed he had told the night floor-waiter not to call him.
He had had a very good night, and within two minutes of waking up he
felt equal to running a hundred luxury hotels.
Towards Oldham he had been benevolent, telling him that of course he
could withdraw his notice if he chose, and that indeed in the
panjandrum's opinion he would be wise to choose. The relation between
the two was at once restored to its former perfection, and both of them
were relieved and delighted, and both of them tried, without complete
success, to hide their feelings. He had breakfasted with deliberate
sloth, dawdling, chatting to Oldham, wasting time.
He had telephoned an amiable greeting to Cousin, saying that he, Evelyn,
must see to his own business first, but would put in an appearance at
the daily conference if possible. In his heart he had no expectation of
attending. Why should be attend? If he had not hastened his arrival by
three days the Conference would have proceeded that Monday morning
satisfactorily without him. Cousin had mentioned in his
characteristically aloof tone that the project for a special New Year's
Eve fête in the grill-room would be brought forward, as Ceria had asked
for its discussion. To which Evelyn had replied with detachment that he
knew nothing about it. To which Cousin had brightly retorted that he
knew nothing about it either, but that it seemed to be somehow in the
air. Whereupon receivers were hung up.
There were two piles of documents and letters for the panjandrum's
august notice: Reggie Dacker's and Miss Cass's. Dacker's of course had
precedence. But Miss Cass had a robust notion of the importance of her
pile. In a pause due to Dacker's failure to find a paper, she pushed a
letter under Evelyn's eyes.
"This is urgent, sir," said she firmly, in a low voice.
Evelyn did not read the letter. He glanced up at her as she stood over
him.
"It depends what you call urgent," said he. "Seeing that I wasn't
expected back till Wednesday night, nothing can be urgent till Thursday
morning. Supposing I hadn't been here to-day?" One of his theories about
women was that they lacked the sense of proportion and were incapable of
distinguishing between one urgency and another. One of Miss Cass's
theories about men was that they lacked the sense of actuality and were
incapable of seeing things as they were. What was the point (thought
Miss Cass) of supposing that he wasn't there? He _was_ there. He might
as usefully have supposed that the hotel had been burnt down. She took
back the paper, but she had no resentment, because the panjandrum was in
a heavenly temper after all (not that his temper was ever bad--she
admitted), and most men, even panjandrums, were children and queer in
the head.
Dacker discovered his document and passed it across the desk. Evelyn
studied it very attentively. It concerned a matter which in Evelyn's
opinion far transcended all other matters in urgency and intrinsic
importance. Compared to that matter, projects for fêtes, disturbing
graphs showing the curves of individual consumption by visitors,
estimates for alterations and decorations, even the merging of luxury
hotels into one grand homogeneous enterprise, were trifles. Evelyn had
begun a very elaborate fighting campaign for the reform of the licensing
laws of his country. For months he had been engaged on the preliminary
organisation of the campaign. He was just returned, now, from a
continental tour of towns whose citizens bought and drank in the way of
alcohol what they pleased, when they pleased, where they pleased. The
contrast between the Continent and Britain was utterly exasperating to a
British publican. And Evelyn, if not a publican, but the manager of the
greatest luxury hotel on earth, was treated by the licensing laws
exactly as if he was the landlord of the lowest drinking den in
Limehouse. He could not allow to be served, in the public rooms, the
most ordinary and respectable beverages before a certain hour or after a
certain hour, and both hours were preposterous. Not five times in a year
was there a case of offensive inebriation at the Imperial Palace. And
yet his head-waiters were forced to walk round his restaurant and his
grill-room at a given moment and submit themselves and him to the
indignity of telling visitors of irreproachable manners and social
standing that they must order their alcohol then or never. The situation
was monstrous, and would have been incredible did it not exist. The
wonder was that any high-class hotel could keep its doors open. The
wonder was that a revolution, with glass-breaking, arson, and the
overthrow of Governments, had not occurred. Why had Britain fought and
won the war if the sequel was to be the abolition of natural liberties
which obtained in Britain before the said war, and which still obtained
throughout the Continent? Etc., etc. It was laughable. But it was also
ruinous, humiliating and intolerable. Admittedly the head of the hotel
world, he held it to be his duty--and many other hotel-keepers held it
to be his duty--to lead the movement for reform. And he was leading it,
with all the subterranean, subtle ingenuities of which he was capable.
Members of Parliament, journalists, publicists, powers in the City were
being regimented for the campaign. And he talked to them! By God! He
talked to them! Perhaps too vehemently, with an excessive exaggeration.
He loved to set side by side those two phrases "lowest drinking den" and
"greatest luxury hotel." He enjoyed the melodrama of their contrast. His
excuse was that he felt very deeply on the subject. Nobody had
convincingly answered his arguments, the arguments of the hotel world,
and nobody could. On all other subjects Evelyn could be as detached, as
judicial, as Cousin himself. But on the subject of the licensing
laws--well, his business acquaintances and his principal subordinates
would say to one another that if you wanted to have fun and witness a
real firework display you had only to start Mr. Orcham on the licensing
laws. The movement which he was leading had had a lot to do with the
appointment of a Governmental Licensing Commission. The Commission
marked a forward step. Evelyn, however, was extremely dissatisfied with
the choice of its members.
On this Monday morning he was busy with Reggie Dacker on some details of
the campaign, and the document which Dacker had ultimately produced
related to it. And yet suddenly, worried by a teasing thought, and
possibly amazed by tiny pricks of his directorial conscience, he broke
off the discussion with Dacker and said:
"Excuse me for three minutes, will you, my boy? I must just----" And,
demanding a leaf of foolscap from the assiduous Miss Cass, he wrote out
in his clear hand a short memorandum.
"Put this in an envelope and take it to Mr. Cousin yourself--at once,
please," he said, as he folded the leaf in four.
"But the Conference won't be finished," Miss Cass demurred.
"I hope it won't," said Evelyn with a genuinely cheerful laugh.
II
And so Miss Cass, bearing the foolscap envelope, passed down the
corridor, and opened the door (in a rather dark corner) over which
burned night and day the electric sign "Manager's Office," and went in.
Miss Tilton, Mr. Cousin's secretary, was not at her desk, at which sat
idly a page-boy ready to answer the telephone. He smiled timidly at Miss
Cass, who gave him a nod.
Even before she opened the inner door into Mr. Cousin's private room she
heard the sound of vivacious, argumentative conversation. The room was
full of men and smoke. Mr. Cousin presided at his desk, a desk large but
not as large as Evelyn's; and by his side sat young Pozzi, his
second-in-command. At the end of the table was Marian Tilton, with
notebook, just as Miss Cass sat with notebook at the end of _her_
principal's desk. Indeed, in various ways the disposition of Mr.
Cousin's room showed the influence of Evelyn. A dozen or fifteen men,
and Violet Powler (serene and receptive), all heads of departments,
constituted the Conference: an attendance somewhat fuller than usual.
Evidently the chief protagonists were Ceria, Immerson, the publicity
head, Ruffo, the Banqueting-manager, and Jones-Wyatt, the
Bands-and-Cabaret-manager. And evidently the topic was the proposed
special New Year's Eve fête in the grill-room.
Amadeo Ruffo had been arguing against it, and one of his reasons was
that Jones-Wyatt could probably not provide a first-rate band for only
one night. Jones-Wyatt, a full-bodied, youngish man well versed in the
musical, music-hall, theatrical and operatic worlds, had been
half-heartedly opposing the scheme. But Ruffo's sinister suggestion had
in a moment changed his attitude. Of course he could provide a band, and
a first-rate band. They might leave the band to him; he would answer for
it. He did, however, object to the cinema proposition, because the
broad, square columns which supported the ceiling of the grill-room
would prevent a good twenty-five per cent. of the revellers from seeing
the screen in its entirety. (Nobody else had thought of this snag.) His
idea was that the entertainment should be exclusively musical, and of
the highest character, with a quartet of seasonable carollers and
perhaps a soprano: which artists would be fully audible if not visible.
Immerson, in his soft, earnest tones, had espoused this idea. Immerson
was strongly in favour of the general scheme, partly for its exciting
novelty, but more because it would spread out before him fresh vistas of
piquant publicity. Cappone, the Restaurant-manager, in the secrecy of
his mind, did not approve the grill-room scheme, which, he feared, might
impair the glory of his own fête in the restaurant; but loyalty to his
colleague deterred him from expressing himself.
Those two marvellous smilers, Cappone and Ceria, smiled upon one another
at intervals in touching amity. Several men were talking at once as Miss
Cass appeared. Even the disinterested burst out now and then in loud,
impulsive monosyllables. Keenness and animation were the note of the
polemic. All genuinely and fervently desired to increase the prestige of
the Imperial Palace, but some in one way and some in another. The scene
had heat without hostility. Sir Henry Savott would have been flattered
and delighted could he have witnessed the various liveliness of which a
casual sentence from his mouth so richly furnished with teeth was the
origin.
On the whole, feeling supported the scheme. Again and again the
master-argument for it had been stated: namely, first, that about two
hundred would-be roysterers had received printed forms expressing regret
that every table in the restaurant had been booked; and, secondly, that
it would be a pity to waste these ladies and gentlemen if they could be
utilised.
Mr. Cousin was calm and impartial. He certainly was not averse to the
scheme; nor was Pozzi. And Mr. Cousin considered that, as the panjandrum
on the telephone had vouchsafed no opinion, still less a command, he was
free to come to a decision on his own responsibility. During Evelyn's
absence, he had grown accustomed to making decisions without reference,
and at least twice when Mr. Dacker, whose telephoning to Evelyn
sometimes clashed with his--when Mr. Dacker had disagreed with him, the
'alter ego' had yielded.
As for Miss Cass, she invaded the Conference with perfect assurance. She
and her notebook had attended many conferences. She came now as a sort
of papal envoy--slightly irritated because she did not know what message
on what subject she was carrying. She was on familiar terms with
everyone in the room, but as she walked briskly round the edges of the
Conference to the back of Mr. Cousin's desk, she ignored everyone except
Marian Tilton, to whom she gave the nod and feminine smile of
superiority. She offered the foolscap envelope to Mr. Cousin:
"Mr. Orcham asked me to give you this."
Mr. Cousin opened the envelope, and before reading its contents murmured
to Miss Cass, who was turning away:
"Better wait a moment."
Then he carefully perused the message.
"I think I will read this to you just as it is--it's from Mr. Orcham,"
Mr. Cousin addressed the suddenly still Conference.
And he read:
"'I can think of a number of reasons both for and against the very
interesting proposal for arranging for a New Year's Eve festivity in the
grill-room. But there is one reason which in my opinion outweighs all
others and which ought to settle the point. The grill-room has always
been a place free from every rule except that of good manners. At any
time of day or evening anyone can enter it in any dress, and order any
meal, which will be charged either _à la carte_ or at a _prix fixe_
according to the judgment of the manager. No formalities are observed.
The grill-room has a very large clientèle which is aware of this state
of things and counts on it. It is universally known as a restaurant of
relaxation, where food of the finest sort can be eaten at ease and in
quietness. Thousands of customers look on it as a retreat upon which
they can rely. It is open every night of the year. No holiday or fête
has ever been allowed to disturb its normal course. What would its
habitués think if one night its character were to be altered, and a
definite menu and hour imposed upon them, with various unavoidable rules
affecting dress, etc., and the introduction of music and a formal
entertainment? Any such alteration would be a blow to the particular
reputation of the grill-room. It would cause disappointment and possibly
some resentment. Confidence in the stability of the policy of the
grill-room would unquestionably be undermined. Which would be, I think,
a rather serious matter.--EVELYN ORCHAM.'"
Silence followed. The Director had spoken. He had issued no ukase. He
had not employed his authority like a hammer. But he had uttered that
formidable word: Policy. And he had advanced an argument which not one
of his subordinates had thought of--or at any rate spoken of. Nobody in
the Conference surmised in that dramatic moment that the panjandrum was
as human as any of themselves. None knew that the incursion of Sir Henry
Savott into the politics of the Palace had abraded Evelyn's most
delicate susceptibilities, and that he had been shocked to get the first
word of a proposed terrific innovation from a quite minor, if valued,
person--old Perosi, and that these two things together had affected the
whole trend of his thinking. The Conference could judge only of the
final expression of the directorial reflections, and the final
expression was so phrased as to permit of no answer.
"Thank you," said Mr. Cousin, turning for an instant to Miss Cass behind
him. In the redoubtable hush Miss Cass, diminished and yet very proud of
her master's moral force, and taking some share of it to herself, left
the Conference chamber.
"Well, my friends----" said Mr. Cousin, reserved, detached, apparently
indifferent. But he offered nothing else to the Conference save a faint
bland and undecipherable smile.
The Conference saw Ceria rise from his seat and slowly and silently walk
out. The young man gave one glance at Miss Powler.
"If you will excuse me," said Miss Powler to Mr. Cousin.
And she too walked out. No other person in the room moved or spoke. The
hush produced by the panjandrum's communication was protracted by the
solemn, startling exit of Ceria; for all realised, with a sentiment akin
to awe, that tragedy had been nearer than they thought. All were
intimidated--and especially the emotional Italians--by the lamentable
ravaged figure of the manager of the grill-room. Tears came into the
eyes of the bright and worldly Marian Tilton. Miss Cass had escaped in
the nick of time.
III
Violet followed Ceria at a distance of twenty feet or so, into the great
entrance-hall, across it, down the broad corridor leading to the empty
grill-room, past the doors of the grill-room, into a narrow transverse
corridor beyond, at the end of which was Ceria's office.
Ceria vanished into the office, leaving the door ajar. She knocked
softly at the door. No answer. She went cautiously in. The room was less
than small; it was tiny; but it was an office, a piece of private
territory, and Ceria would now and then mention it with a certain
complacency of importance: "My office." Violet, however, had never heard
of it, did not know what the room was till she saw it. Ceria was seated
at a tiny table-desk, elbows on the blotting-pad, chin supported by the
palms of the hands, staring at a Milanese sheet-calendar hung on the
wall. He heard a slight cough, and sprang up, collecting himself in
order to be manly, and summoning a fairly deceptive counterfeit of his
famous smile. He was pale.
"I beg your pardon. Please," he murmured weakly.
Violet did not know how to begin. Her wish was to soothe him and uplift
him out of the despair which had been so alarmingly apparent on his
wistful face as he walked out of Mr. Cousin's room. She had feared lest
he might faint or do something silly--and no woman near to tend him! You
never knew with these delicate, impressible foreigners. (As a fact she
had formed an entirely wrong idea of the Latin temperament.) She could
not bluntly say: "You shouldn't take it too hard." Or something like
that. She said, in a tone as commonplace as she could produce:
"About the special Floors-menu for to-morrow, Mr. Ceria. Could I have a
copy of it to-day? It's useful to me to know beforehand what it
is.... If I'm not disturbing you too much."
Ceria, with the approval of Mr. Cousin, had recently introduced a
special short menu for meals in the private rooms. Upon request a
special fixed price was made for it. The object of the device was to
tempt visitors away from the full menus which contained dishes not easy
to serve satisfactorily on the floors. Both menus were offered to the
hungry, but visitors were quickly learning to choose from the special
one because it simplified the plaguy task of choosing.
"Yes, certainly," Ceria answered with forced animation. "Please sit
down. Have this chair. I'll find it. I'll find it." He ferreted in a
drawer in the table.
Violet did not sit down. Ceria failed to find the menu. Obviously he was
not searching with any method in the untidiness of the drawer. After a
moment he stopped, as if trying to reflect. His eye met Violet's.
"You ought to go home as early as you can this afternoon and do a bit of
hard work in your beautiful garden," said Violet impulsively.
In her expression and in her voice Ceria saw and heard the benevolent
purpose of her intrusion. He hesitated, fumbling for the right course to
take. His eyes moistened. Violet thought: "How could I suggest his going
back to that empty house, with nobody but a servant there?"
At length he said:
"At this season... one cannot work in the garden. What can one do in
the garden?"
"How stupid of me!" Violet exclaimed. She really felt stupid. She knew
nothing of gardens.
"And it is nearly dark at four o'clock," Ceria added.
Another detail that Violet had most stupidly forgotten.
"But," said Ceria. "I will go for a drive in my little car. I adore
driving in the dark. I will go a long distance." His smile became
genuine, though it was forlorn, touching.
"How many days is it since you first thought of the fête in your
grill-room?" Violet asked gently. "Not many."
Ceria raised his eyebrows in assent.
"No. Not many."
"Well, you are no worse off now than you were then," said Violet.
"You are a very kind philosopher," Ceria murmured. "Yes, you are very
kind. I understand you. It is a lesson."
"No, no!" Violet protested. "Please excuse me. I only thought of it."
Ceria timidly extended his hand. Violet's hand advanced of its own
accord. Ceria took it, and kissed it. To him the action was quite
natural. But it thrilled Violet. Nobody had ever kissed her hand before,
except in the make-believe of the amateur comic opera stage.
Ceria relinquished her hand. And not a second too soon. For the face of
Miss Venables appeared, as it were furtively, in the doorway. Instantly
Ceria resumed control of himself.
"Come in, Miss Venables."
The older woman nodded indifferently to Violet, then ignored her for
Ceria.
"I'm leaving this afternoon, Mr. Ceria," said she. "And I could not go
without saying good-bye." Her heavy, prim voice was as usual charged
with a martyr's melancholy; but the intense glance of her dark eyes
showed that Ceria's wistful smile could make its victims anywhere and
everywhere.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Ceria," Violet broke prosaically in. "Perhaps you
could send that menu up to me. Or I will send down for it."
"You shall have it at once," said Ceria, in a style as prosaic as
Violet's. He had nothing to learn from her or anyone about the use of
vocal tone and facial muscles. None could have guessed, now, that five
minutes earlier he had felt as if he were Violet's weak, clinging,
passionately grateful child.
IV
Violet left quickly, without further notice of Miss Venables. Ceria took
two steps to the door, and, behind Miss Venables' back, re-established
intimate communication with Violet by one transient look. Violet crossed
once more the entrance-hall with its ceaseless foot-traffic and quiet
stir of visitors and officials and murmured colloquys and down-sittings
and up-risings. And she ascended away out of all that worldliness in the
lift, happy, jingling some keys and talking to the liftman about
weather, which he seldom or never had the opportunity to see in autumn
and winter. And while talking she thought of Ceria as her grateful
child, talented, brilliant, all-conquering--and pathetic.
Then she stepped from the lift into the withdrawn world of Eighth, where
thick carpet dulled every sound of the corridor and shaded lamps gave a
discreet mystery to hushed life. Afar off she saw the figures of two
chambermaids--Beatrice Noakes and another--and a valet and a waiter
gathered in a group. Eighth was their universe, of which each smallest
phenomenon was familiar. For them the entrance-hall and the public rooms
had no existence. The valet held in his hand a leaden weight attached to
a long cord: apparatus by which he had just been clearing an obstruction
in the letter-shoot caused by some too bulky envelope--a delicate
operation more exciting to the personnel of the floor than any event in
managerial offices.
At sight of the temporary head-housekeeper the group dissolved. The
valet disappeared silently into his brushing-and-cleaning room, the
waiter into his kitchen-and-pantry, a chambermaid, using a pass-key,
into a bedroom. Only Beatrice Noakes was left. She moved towards the
door of the head-housekeeper's sitting-room and confidently awaited
Violet.
"There's a lamp-stand broken in 06, miss," she said earnestly.
"But you've told me about that once, Beaty," Violet answered, laughing.
"Oh! Have I? So I have, miss. Better twice than not at all, they do say.
Yes, miss. I hear Miss Prentiss has gone, miss. And I know her trunks is
gone. They're labelled for Gleneagles, miss."
"I wonder how you hear of all these things, Beaty," said Violet. "It's
very clever of you." She smiled; but she felt disappointed and a little
grieved.
Prentiss had gone without a good-bye, even a good-bye of mere ceremony.
Since the scene on the night of Mac's seizure, the well-bred Prentiss
had spoken with her only in the way of work. Good breeding might have
prompted her to some formal alleviation of the feud. But no! She had
departed for the new northern post which, thanks to Palace prestige, she
had obtained without any difficulty. She would never again be seen in
the Palace. And how she would try to impose her unquestioned gentility
upon Gleneagles, and how, after a few days, she would tear the good name
of the Palace management into fragments!
"And what's the news to-day about Miss Maclaren, miss? I suppose you'll
have been hearing?"
"A bit better. She's eaten part of an omelette."
"Well, that _is_ wonderful news, miss. An omelette! Do you think I might
go and see her? Me and Daisy was saying last night as perhaps I might.
Just to show like, if you know what I mean."
"She'd be very pleased. But you oughtn't to stay more than ten minutes."
"Oh no, miss! Such an idea wouldn't enter my head. I've got a
wrist-watch and I should wear it, and I should look at it when I went in
and... Miss Venables hasn't gone yet, miss----"
"I know," Violet interrupted the flow. She realised now that Mrs. Noakes
had mentioned the broken lamp-stand only in order to start one of her
grand miscellaneous gossipings, for which she lived. "I've seen Miss
Venables, downstairs."
"Oh! I'm _so_ glad she's seen you, miss," said Beatrice, with
exaggerated relief in her voice, thereby informing Violet that the
female floor-staffs had been keeping careful watch on the great
housekeepers' feud, and lusciously speculating as to whether any of the
parties concerned would relent at the last moment either from human
kindliness or from a sense of social decency.
"Let me come past," said Violet quickly. "I've got plenty to do, if you
haven't."
Beatrice stood aside from the doorway and Violet entered her
sitting-room and shut the door and sat down, but not to any task. She
was pleased that Beatrice, misinterpreting her words, had assumed a
reconciliation between Venables and herself. But she felt disturbed.
Would Venables come and say good-bye, or would she not? The question
filled her mind, so that she could not settle to desk-work, nor even to
a round of room-inspections, nor even to telephoning. She was entirely
innocent, and yet she had a sensation of guilt.
Little secretary Agatha burst schoolgirlishly into the room, a question
on her lips: "Anything urgent you want me to do?" Violet shook her head.
"Better go and get your lunch, if it isn't too early," said Violet.
Agatha glanced at the clock.
"Five minutes," said she, and went away again.
Violet rose and moved to the window, and stared at the lofty roofs of
the ugliest building in London. Why couldn't people be friends? Why was
the lovable Ceria lonely and sad? Why did Prentiss harden her heart?
Would Venables harden her heart? Why was the world what it was, when it
might so easily be different?... Violet looked at the dock. Nearly
one hour had amazingly slipped by since she had come into her room; and
a score of jobs remained undone. She must go down to lunch. She hoped
that by this time Venables would have lunched and left the housekeepers'
refectory. She could not have borne to meet Venables in the presence of
others. She had been through that experience too often.
V
There was a knock at the door. Venables primly entered. Violet was both
relieved and affrighted. Her heart asserted its beat. She waited,
cautious.
Venables said:
"I thought I'd tell you. They've just telephoned up that Mrs. Oulsnam
has come."
"Oh, thank you very much for letting me know, Venables. I suppose she'll
come to see me. I was just going down to lunch."
Mrs. Oulsnam had left the Majestic in order to come to the Palace, and
Venables was replacing her at the Majestic. This was another of Evelyn's
ingenious changes. Through the intermediation of Mr. Dacker the
transaction had been carried out with the nicest regard for the pride of
Miss Venables, who had received a letter from the Majestic management to
the effect that it had heard that she was leaving the Imperial Palace,
and that if she cared to call, etc. Evelyn now of course in fact if not
in theory controlled the Majestic. But no one referred to the reality of
the situation existing between the two hotels. Everyone pretended--and
Venables more convincingly than anyone--that the Majestic had sought for
Venables on her notorious housekeeping merits. As for the interests of
the Palace, Mrs. Oulsnam produced an excellent reference. Miss
Prentiss's post was not to be refilled; for Violet had worked out Miss
Maclaren's plan for the reduction of the Palace Floors staff.
"Not at all," said Venables.
"I do hope you'll be happy at the Majestic," Violet exclaimed, with a
sudden outpouring of goodwill which surprised even herself. Her features
relaxed and her mood was lightened by the mysterious lifting of an
obscure oppression.
"Oh, thank you, Powler. I feel sure I shall. You know the Majestic is
going to be very much livened up. I heard yesterday they are to make a
new carpet for the restaurant there at our works. But I expect you know
all about that already."
"No, I don't," said Violet, fibbing in order to flatter Venables'
superior knowledge.
"And here's my keys," said Venables. Violet accepted the bunch.
A pause.
"Well," said Venables, "I suppose I must be saying good-bye."
She held out her hand. Violet gave it one little squeeze. In doing so
she squeezed some tears out of Venables' eyes.
"I know it wasn't your fault. You couldn't help it," said Venables in a
broken voice.
Violet might have replied: "Couldn't help what?" But instead she
replied: "I knew you knew. It's all right."
Venables said:
"But I've never been treated like that before. Never. And you must admit
it was very humiliating, dear."
"I'm sure it was," Violet agreed. "But it was for such a short time. It
wasn't worth while appointing you head-housekeeper for such a short time
as that. And you haven't been humiliated for long, have you?"
"N-o."
Not a word about Prentiss.
Venables brought her head forward and kissed Violet, and Violet returned
the kiss and saw Venables' face very close. What a ruin, that
complexion! Without doubt the old thing was feeling deeply her severance
from the Palace, where she had served for so many years. And the poor
old thing had now to face a new career in strange surroundings! "And,"
thought Violet, "she'll go on being a hotel-housekeeper until she's old.
And what then? And so shall I go on being a hotel-housekeeper till I'm
old. One of these days I shall be as old as she is; and what then, for
me too?" She could hardly prevent herself from crying, though she did
not really believe that she would ever be as old and withered and
desiccated as Venables. She was mournful. But she was happy. Venables
went off with the subdued self-contemplating smile of one who has
righteously performed his duty to society, recognising virtue in a
junior colleague, increasing the sum of kindness, and with resigned
courage fronting a hard world.
CHAPTER XLVII
NEW YEAR'S EVE
I
A quarter to nine on New Year's Eve. Although the festive dinner in the
restaurant of the Palace was scheduled to begin at 8.30, a continuous
procession of automobiles and taxi-cabs was entering the courtyard of
the hotel, hooting to stimulate the dilatory in front, curving under the
vast marquise, setting down bright women and sombre men, and curving
away again back into Birdcage Walk, whose breadth was narrowed by double
lines of parked cars. And high above the building, unseen from the
region of the marquise, rose the flood-lit tower of the Palace,
informing the West End by an admixture of red rays in its customary
white that the occasion was special. Mowlem, the head-day-hall-porter,
was himself active on the steps outside the portals with a corps of
janissaries larger than usual, directing and speeding traffic, bowing to
his numerous acquaintances among the visitors, and disseminating
goodwill and good wishes in the keen air. The crowded scene in the
entrance-hall, viewed from without, was brilliantly appetising, and an
unanswerable proof that Britain was not yet quite the impecunious
back-number which newspapers of all political parties had got into the
habit of proclaiming her to be.
A car stopped, and Mowlem gave to the chauffeur a special word of
dignified intimacy. And when the occupant descended from the car Mowlem
saluted him with a special bow of courtly benevolence.
"A Happy New Year, sir, if not too early."
"Thanks. Same to you."
The arrival was Evelyn. He had chosen the main entrance, preferably to
the Queen Anne entrance, because on grand occasions such as the present
he enjoyed seeing his organisation in the full press of work. He was
still young enough in hotel-management to be thrilled by the long lines
of automobiles and by the whizzing of the doors and by the restless
glitter of the thronged hall, down which he quickly passed,
unrecognised, towards his private office. He beheld the display and saw
that it was good.
Now the Imperial Palace dinner was not the only New Year's Eve
hotel-banquet on that night. There were of course dozens, hundreds, of
others up and down the land. But for Evelyn there was only one other:
that of the Wey Hotel, Evelyn's first love and charge. Every year he saw
the soup served at the Wey banquet. The Wey being a residential hotel,
and almost in the provinces, its meals took place much earlier than
those at the Palace. Evelyn had duly seen the soup served, and even the
fish; and he had given to Mr. Plott, the Wey manager, the impression
that really he would have liked better to usher in the New Year at the
Wey, but that the more complex organism of the Palace was in urgent need
of his watchful supervision, and so he must regretfully leave the Wey
celebration to Mr. Plott's very adequate sole control. And the exigent
Mr. Plott had been quite satisfied. Evelyn would say to old Dennis Dover
that it would have been more than his place was worth not to make an
appearance at the Wey on New Year's Eve.
Having titivated himself anew in his office, he travelled by devious
service-corridors to the service-door of the grill-room; for he had a
quarter of an hour in hand. He had received full reports of the
Conference at which his communication to Cousin had had the effect of
causing a stricken Ceria so dramatically to leave the room, and he felt
therefore that he owed a state visit to Ceria.
As for Ceria, his kingdom was a grand sight to him that evening; for,
surprisingly, every table was occupied or had been booked. The clothes
of the diners exhibited all varieties of taste, from pull-overs and
plus-fours to silken low-cuts, pearls, orchids and white ties. No sign
of the seasonal fête except crackers and bits of holly (no mistletoe).
Plenty of gaiety, plenty of champagne, and no music at all. A large
number of celebrities and notorieties who demonstrated by their presence
that they preferred a decent, simple Bohemianism to the elaborate
formalities of the great affair in Cappone's restaurant. Ceria felt very
flattered, and happiness radiated from his wistful, smiling face as he
walked from table to table bowing and greeting. Indeed Ceria would not
have exchanged places with the more important Cappone. He would have
liked Cappone to see his array of the famous; for he was sure that for
every 'somebody' that Cappone could show, he could show half a dozen.
At a table laid for three persons, half-hidden by a column, sat a young
woman alone, in morning frock. She was reading a newspaper as she drank
soup. Ceria stopped in front of her.
"Is everything as you wish, Miss Savott?" he earnestly enquired. The
girl glanced up from the paper and nodded, smiling; and Ceria bowed and
withdrew. The next moment he descried the panjandrum and went
deferentially to meet him.
"Well, Ceria," Evelyn murmured with much content and approval in his
voice. "I congratulate you. You couldn't have done better than this if
you'd had a dozen bands and the whole New Year rigmarole. You couldn't
have done as well, because a band takes up a deuce of a lot of valuable
room. Now could you?"
"No, sir. You are quite right."
"You'll beat your record to-night."
"I shall, sir," agreed the delighted Ceria.
Evelyn thought:
"He's just like a child."
The pair made a leisurely tour of the room, talking together and
ignoring guests. They passed close by the table where the young woman
sat so strangely alone. Her eyes did not leave the paper, and Evelyn did
not glance aside, and Ceria was too obsessed by the general glorious
aspect of his grill-room to give a thought to the interest which his
chief might be expected to feel in any individual customer, however
eminent the name. A minute later Evelyn left, by the service-door. Ceria
then noticed a page-boy in converse with the solitary girl. As he
arrived again at the table the girl was rising to go.
"You can have this table now," she said to Ceria. "My friends evidently
aren't coming." He did not know that she had not been expecting friends,
having naughtily secured a table for three in order to get ample space
for herself. She dropped a florin on the table for the waiter.
II
In the foyer, which was now steadily losing more people to the
restaurant than it was receiving from the entrance-hall, Evelyn could
see nothing of Sir Henry Savott, who (as it had been finally arranged)
was to be his guest for the evening. But the man could not yet be
accused of unpunctuality; it still wanted one minute to nine o'clock,
the hour of their rendezvous. What Evelyn did see was Cappone, the
Restaurant-manager, talking with a rather troubled expression to Lord
Watlington, and Mrs. Penkethman standing a foot or two away and
carefully not listening. Evelyn divined at once from Mrs. Penkethman's
dissociation of herself from the masculine colloquy that some difficulty
had arisen, and he accordingly moved away, preferring to leave the
conduct of Cappone's business entirely to Cappone. But Lord Watlington,
still more familiarly known to his friends and the world as Harry
Matcham--though two years had passed since his 'public services' had
lifted him into the peerage--had caught sight of Evelyn, and totally
ignoring both his lovely partner and Cappone, walked up to him, followed
at a little distance by Mrs. Penkethman, while the astute Cappone
descended abruptly into the restaurant.
His lordship was a man of forty-eight, of average height, but somewhat
more than average girth, exceedingly dark, with coal-black hair and
eyes. He bore some resemblance to his friend Sir Henry Savott. Indeed
the imperfectly informed now and then confused the one with the other.
Savott was dark, but Lord Watlington was darker. Savott's face was very
broad between the ears, but Lord Watlington's was broader. Savott's gaze
was piercing, but Lord Watlington's was more piercing. And further,
Savott was a triumphant financier, but Lord Watlington was a man of
wealth, wealth absolute, wealth realisable, not potential wealth
dependent upon the turn of markets or the success of flotations.
Lord Watlington never touched enterprises which gambled upon the
capricious tastes of the public. Thus he had a few days earlier rejected
a wonderful offer from Savott to go into the cinema business. He had
refused many temptations to acquire controlling interests in newspapers
because (he argued) they were at the mercy of the big advertisers and
the big advertisers were at the mercy of the uncertainties of trade and
international politics. Instead of owning newspapers he owned mills
which sold paper to newspapers. Instead of buying or building
architectural structures, he bought ground-rents, that is, freeholds,
and gave the risks of building to others. He was the largest shareholder
in a large insurance company; ditto in a British subsidiary of a foreign
bank; he was chairman of a very important Investment Trust Company. He
was nothing if not gilt-edged. He had made his fortune and his position
by the exercise of judgment, by his necromantic vision of the future,
which after all was not vision but only an accurate weighing of
probabilities, by his instinctive regard for essentials and his
instinctive contempt for inessentials; and by nothing else.
Among various gifts Lord Watlington had the gift of creation. When a
transatlantic liner was fully booked up he could create a suite in it
for himself. When a fashionable first-night was sold out, he could
create a box in it for himself within two hours of the rise of the
curtain. From pride and on principle he never asked for accommodation in
advance anywhere. Similarly he never carried money. Often he would
borrow money for munificent tips--it was always repaid by cheque with a
secretarial letter of thanks the next day.
In the previous week a slight coolness had supervened between him and
Savott, who had playfully said to him: "Now, Harry, don't behave like a
spoiled beauty." He did not like the remark, which had enlightened him
as to the secret attitude of his friends towards his idiosyncrasies.
On the afternoon of this New Year's Eve, Mrs. Penkethman had expressed a
desire to attend the fête at the Palace. Harry had shown unwillingness,
but when Mrs. Penkethman had added darkly and with resignation that no
table could be had, Harry had immediately promised to take her. He had
telephoned on the instant to Cappone, who had replied hopefully that,
while no table was presently available, some table was almost sure to be
cancelled, and he would have the greatest pleasure in reserving it for
his lordship. His lordship had arrived with the beautiful Nancy, and lo!
not a table had been cancelled. He, Harry Matcham Lord Watlington, could
not be accommodated! He had not quite contrived to mask his sentiments.
Incredulity was succeeded by indignation, and indignation by anger. He
saw himself publicly humiliated in the eyes of Nancy. He was furious. To
save his repute he would willingly have burnt down the Imperial Palace
(which was amply insured in his own company, which had reinsured a large
part of the huge risk in New York). Nevertheless in his frightful and
unique quandary Lord Watlington accosted Evelyn with the airiest
seductive nonchalance; for he was an actor of genius.
"Let me make you acquainted with the most beautiful woman in London," he
said, introducing Mrs. Penkethman. And then he explained his trouble,
and said that he and Mrs. Penkethman must go elsewhere, and looked at
Evelyn as though he confidently expected him to work a miracle. Evelyn
enjoyed the spectacle for a few moments; it was as exquisitely agreeable
to him as the flavour of a fine cigar. He knew by hearsay the fable of
Lord Watlington. He cared naught for the presumed financial relations
between Lord Watlington and Savott, author of the great hotel-merger. To
inflict a horrible suspense upon Lord Watlington delighted the
unchristian, too human panjandrum. Then he said:
"Nothing is simpler. I have a table, and if Mrs. Penkethman and you will
dine with me I shall be charmed."
Lord Watlington protested, and accepted. He had won. He was still Lord
Watlington. He could still support the glance of Mrs. Penkethman.
Then Sir Henry Savott appeared on the stairs leading down from the
entrance-hall, and handed his hat and coat with studied negligence to a
powdered, silk-calved footman.
"Don't tell me," Savott exclaimed. "I know I'm late. Three minutes. It's
your traffic outside that did it."
"You aren't late, my dear fellow," said Evelyn. "Every clock in the
hotel is wrong. Lord Watlington and Mrs. Penkethman are joining us.
Shall we go in?"
Both Harry Matcham and Henry Savott, behaving with nobility, utterly
forgot the coolness which had been somewhat marring their business
alliance.
Vast curtains had been drawn between the foyer and the restaurant,
leaving room for only two persons at a time to pass down the six steps
to the restaurant floor. An attendant was taking tickets from the
entrants, but of course no tickets were demanded from Evelyn and his
guests, who descended with sovereign freedom into the noisy, crowded,
multi-coloured arena of the banquet. Few noticed the appearance of the
three celebrities and of the panjandrum of the tremendous scene; for in
the main the revellers were merely the well-to-do, who could afford
three guineas a head for dinner (exclusive of wines). The exclusive
smart were hardly represented on that night at the Imperial Palace, and
the merely well-to-do are not familiar with the faces of celebrities; it
needs the smart to recognise the smart.
III
Lord Watlington comprehended, as in the wake of Evelyn the party wound
its way to a table in a corner, why Cappone's attitude to him had been
so immovably _non possumus_. The tables were packed so close together
that not another could have been inserted among them. The waiters
performed marvels of self-insinuation, though with all their skill they
were continually kicking against chair-legs and thus annoying scores of
diners, who looked round offended at the falsely-unconscious disturbers.
The whole of the space usually reserved for dancing was filled with
serried tables, and an annexe of the restaurant, usually separated by a
glazed partition which had been removed for this night only, was filled
with serried tables.
On the site of part of the partition a gorgeous bandstand had been
upraised. The band was playing fortissimo, but its majestic strains had
to fight a battle against the din of shouted small-talk from one
thousand pairs of lips; neither the music nor the small-talk could be
heard sufficiently well to enable umpires to have reached a clear
decision as to the result of the contest. Moreover the sense of hearing
was impaired by the appeal to the eyes of flowers, silken decorations,
Chinese lanterns, variegated frocks, glinting jewels, coiffures,
vermilion mouths, shining eyes, suspended bunches of tinted balloons,
and a huge clock with illuminated hands and roman figures.
Disorder seemed to rule; but beneath disorder was order, and the secret
sign of it was the intent, absorbed faces of the industrious waiters who
grimly toiled on in the one sure hope that the moment of surcease would
come when the last course had been served, and the last bottle opened,
and the last tip collected. Some of them already saw in a prophetic
vision the restaurant dark and empty, the tables turned from white tops
to green and the chairs piled in a series of scraggy heaps.
And round and round, bowing, smiling, placating, flattering, moved the
young Cappone, apparently unaware of the heavy load of supreme
responsibility which lay on his shoulders.
At the directorial table, for which Evelyn had ordered two extra covers
before leaving the foyer, Mrs. Penkethman was put into the best seat,
with her back to the corner and a full view of the panorama of the
restaurant; Evelyn was on her left, Henry Savott on her right, while
Lord Watlington had to be content with a view of Nancy and the two
converging walls which framed her. The beautiful creature wore a very
simple dark frock, to show that she did not take the fête very
seriously, was indeed condescending to it. (On the popular night of New
Year's Eve the world of the Imperial Palace was not her world; the
majority of her friends were away either in country-houses or on the
Continent.) But she carried a few trinkets, a bag, and a cigarette-case
whose richness would have suited the smartest entertainment that any
expert (such as herself) in smartness could devise. She alone in the
group was completely at ease and happy, her appetite for pleasure being
unappeasable. She lived for pleasure; the pursuit of pleasure was her
vocation, and the diversions which she called pleasures never cloyed on
that robust palate. Also she had three men, and very important men, to
herself.
Evelyn felt a little nervous; for the origin of the dinner was his
desire to justify his boast to Savott that the Palace could and would
serve a thousand absolutely first-rate meals simultaneously; his
ridiculous conscience had prevented him from giving special orders in
regard to his own table; and in spite of his Palatial confidence he was
visited by qualms of fear lest something, some detail, might fail in
perfection. Withal, he would accept the risk. Savott was slightly
displeased because he had been anticipating the thoroughly intimate
_tête-à-tête_ to which Evelyn had invited him. Lord Watlington was
disappointed partly because he had won a table only by favour and not by
force, and partly because he had been anticipating a thoroughly intimate
_tête-à-tête_ with Nancy, who had remained in town to solace Harry's
compulsory loneliness. All these three males had to be soothed,
smoothed, enlivened, sweetened, guided into a mood of self-complacency,
freed from cares and corroding worm-preoccupations.
Nancy was the queen, and the queen knew her business. Harry Matcham, who
was not facile in sincere praise, though he would fling insincere praise
about in trowelfuls, always said that she was the soothingest woman in
London--he did not really believe that she was the most beautiful woman
in London. Nancy knew that a bad first quarter of an hour might easily
discompose a party for a whole evening; she knew that great and
successful men were apt to be conscienceless in the matter of social
amenities, and that in particular they chatted or kept glumly silent
according to their caprice of the moment: she knew that any conversation
is better than muteness or reluctant, sparse monosyllables; and she knew
that in the game of small-talk personalities are always trumps.
Therefore, no sooner were the four chairs occupied than she softly burst
out in her soothing voice, to Sir Henry:
"And where is my darling Gracie to-night? Do you know, she's very
naughty. I haven't heard from her for weeks, and she writes such amusing
letters--when she does write."
"Do you think _I_'ve heard from her, any more than you?" said Sir Henry,
with an ironic smile. "I suppose she's in Paris. On the other hand she
may be somewhere all by herself in the country near Paris. Last news I
had she was writing a book."
"A novel of course," said Lord Watlington, also with irony.
"No," said Evelyn, "I don't think it's a novel. She did say something to
me about it, but I forget what. Sort of journal of impressions, I
fancy."
"Yes, you're right," Savott agreed, startled by this inside knowledge of
Evelyn's.
"Well, anyway it won't be like anything else," said Lord Watlington.
"She has more brains than any other woman I ever met--yes, my dear" (to
Nancy)--"and you may rely on her to write down absolutely anything that
comes into her head. You'd better see the proofs, Henry."
"I should have to bribe the printers then, Harry. Gracie would die
before she'd show them."
"I always see Nancy's," said Lord Watlington. "I've kept her out of
trouble more than once. I can't imagine why she keeps on writing."
"Who? Me?" asked Mrs. Penkethman plaintively.
"Yes, you!" Lord Watlington repeated with emphasis.
"Yes, you!" repeated Savott with emphasis.
Nancy divined that the two men were a little jealous of one another in
regard to her. Alone with her, each of them was gentle enough as a rule.
But both together, each seemed anxious to demonstrate to the other that
his status with her entitled him to be rough.
"But I must write. I have to," she said still more plaintively,
enveloping both of them in the same tender, appealing, wistfully smiling
glance. "You're my friend, aren't you, Mr. Orcham?"
"Count on me, Mrs. Penkethman."
Nancy contributed, and sometimes she actually wrote, a weekly column of
society gossip to the "Sunday Mercury." The newspaper paid not for the
column but for the signature, than which none could be smarter. Nancy
got nearly all her meals free and half her frocks and hats; she had the
run of at least a dozen country-houses; she had further an allowance of
five thousand a year (not from her divorced husband). So that, being
thus in a chronic condition of penury, she 'simply had,' as she said, to
write. Moreover, it was the correct smart thing to write a column of
society gossip in a Sunday paper. If a smart young woman did not write
such a column, the sole reason must be that she lacked the wits to write
it. And Nancy, for all her sweet tenderness of demeanour, had wits.
IV
Sir Henry Savott changed the subject with the abruptness of a waiter
changing one plate for another. The soup interested him, being a novelty
and a very delicate novelty. At the first spoonful he stopped,
impressed, thoughtful, curious, as to its ingredients. He praised the
soup. It was entitled on the menu-card 'Potage Gracieux.' Nobody at the
table, not even Evelyn, was aware that the name was Maître Planquet's
subtle tribute to the charm exercised by Miss Savott during her visit to
the kitchens many weeks earlier. Maître Planquet had made enquiries
about the identity and station of Gracie.
"Gracie ought by rights to try this," said Sir Henry, all unknowing,
after his brief laudation addressed to Evelyn. Already he was beginning
to be confident that Evelyn's boast as to the quality of the dinner
which the Palace could serve to a thousand people at once, would be
justified. Already the gourmand in him was gaining ground; and, the soup
finished, he anticipated the fish with eager hope.
Evelyn was thinking of Gracie, who had not been in his mind for a long
time, thinking of her with appreciation. She had said that she would
write a book, and she was writing, had written it. She was not of those
who dream of authorship, start a book, drop it and relapse into
futility. She had character. Yes, he was as much impressed by the news
of Gracie as her father had been impressed by the 'Potage Gracieux.'
"That, I venture to think, is a unique hock," Evelyn remarked as the
wine-waiter filled the glasses. "Anyone who prefers champagne will
kindly say the word. But _that_--is a hock."
Sir Henry tasted.
"It is," said he, after a moment's cerebration.
Evelyn felt sympathetic towards Sir Henry's gourmandise. There was
satisfaction in feeding a man who, though he somewhat deteriorated into
grossness at a fine meal, could passionately distinguish between a
first-rate dish and a second-rate. Evelyn had long since quite forgiven
Savott for attempting to interfere in the policy of the grill-room.
Lord Watlington had left half his soup. Also he had asked for a
whisky-and-soda. Mrs. Penkethman had refused soup. Instead of soup she
had taken a cigarette. "Barbarians," thought Evelyn, of the peer and the
lady. He was glad that he had not offered to the barbarians the
barbarism of cocktails. And he was glad to think that Nancy had probably
been (what she would have called) dying for a cocktail, while too
well-bred and modest to demand one.
At the end of the fish the sight and taste of food and the quaffing of
wine had accomplished their effect of stimulating the goodwill proper to
the grandiose occasion. Not only Evelyn's table, but all the tables as
far as the eye could reach across the vistas of white circles and
squares, had loosed themselves into loquacity and open joyousness. The
noise of the band was yielding ground to the human din. Tongues had been
reinforced against the band by gifts from the management of whistles,
rattles and other instruments of music, crackers, and toy-balloons
susceptible to explosion by puncture. Coloured balls were being thrown
about between tables. Coloured streamers were being cast like long
fishing-lines, coiling round the bodies of dignified men and elegant
women, who in their gaiety found no offence in such entanglements.
Perfect strangers merrily saluted and teased and slanged one another.
Adults and the minds of adults diminished into children and child-minds.
Dignity gave way to impudence.
And Sir Henry Savott continued steadily to eat and drink, and Nancy to
smoke, while Lord Watlington was so far affected by his surroundings as
to accept a second whisky-and-soda. Evelyn ate and drank little. His was
the ultimate responsibility for the success of the fête; he was above
Cappone, who perambulated watchfully to and fro, and above Cousin, who
appeared first in one corner and then in another, also watchful. Maître
Planquet himself, in white cap and suit, peeped forth slily from the end
of the corridor which led to the kitchens, to observe the sweet
influences of his rich viands.
The hands of the great illuminated clock moved lazily on towards the
minute which would mark the solemn inception of the New Year with its
good resolutions and its bills. And despite the unseen labours of
engineers deep down below in the subterranean halls tending the
machinery which changed and washed and warmed and cooled the air of the
glittering restaurant, the restaurant grew hotter and hotter. And no one
cared. And as the crackers cracked, producing jewellery, wise mottoes,
prophecies of destiny, and paper caps, the last supplemented by splendid
caps, genuine caps, distributed by girls from baskets, there supervened
the crisis which always arises at such a juncture. Elegant women donned
the splendid caps without the least hesitation or self-consciousness.
Would the men, even after having parted with their dignity? The men
could not. The terrible fear of looking asinine prevented them from
putting on caps. Then a V.C. of a man put on a cap, and felt himself an
ass for no more than a moment. Another man put on a cap, and he was
cheered by his shouting companions. Male craniums surmounted by caps
soon dotted the room. Evelyn's table was encumbered with caps, as the
floor was littered with knotted streamers and little balls and the
wreckage of toy-balloons and crackers. Nancy Penkethman, capped,
motioned to Evelyn to assume a cap. Smiling, he shook his head. Sir
Henry Savott was invited similarly and refused.
"Harry!" said Nancy. Lord Watlington shook his head.
"_Harry!_" Nancy repeated. She was the queen, and the time had arrived
for her to prove the reality of her power, which hitherto out of the
instinct to acquiesce she had forborne to use.
Lord Watlington sheepishly put on a cap, and immediately he had done so
his sheepishness left him. It was a magnificent cap, solidly constructed
in the shape of a helmet, with an authentic blue feather in it. And Sir
Henry Savott donned a cap. The fête was a success.
Nancy Penkethman relinquished her queenliness and her momentarily
shrewish tone, and resumed the rôle of trustful acquiescence and subtle
flattery.
"You look like winning--over this meal," said Sir Henry to Evelyn, in
reference to Evelyn's old claim.
"I hope you'll think so after the savoury," Evelyn replied.
He alone at the table was capless. With him, Nancy had not insisted. She
guessed that he was dreaming, preoccupied, absorbed by his dream. He
felt sure, now, that the festivity could not fail. Nay, he felt sure
that somehow in his gossip columns Immerson would make it the most
marvellous New Year's Eve in all the history of London luxury hotels.
But he was dreaming of more than the triumph of the festivity. He was
dreaming of the future triumph of the gigantic merger of luxury hotels,
of which he was the autocrat and the godfather. Both Sir Henry and Lord
Watlington were indulging in the sweetness of the same dream.
Sir Henry was thinking, as he surveyed the riotous scene and digested
the sumptuous food, and as he glanced furtively at the quiet,
unassuming, laconic man who in his fancy rode the whirlwind and directed
the storm:
"This fellow is the goods. He can't possibly let us down."
And the brain of Lord Watlington, who had never before condescended to a
New Year's Eve public fête, was busily at work on reconstructing for
himself the intricate and immense organisation which underlay the
glowing surface of the show. And he was thinking:
"There's a damn sight more in this fellow than some people might
suppose, to look at him."
In 'some people' Lord Watlington in fact included himself. He too had
visions of a sensational triumph for the Merger, and thereby was made
glad, for he was the chief of the plutocrats who in secret were lending
their financial prestige and credit to Savott's scheme; and though he
had ten times as much wealth as he could spend, he would have regarded
the loss of a single penny of it as a heartrending and humiliating
calamity.
The speech of none of the three men gave the slightest clue to his
reflections. The table was talking incessantly, but the talk had no
subject, scarcely a topic, unless it were the oddities of other
revellers.
Evelyn was awakened from his reverie by the sight of a human being
wandering, staring, searching with his eyes, among the tables. He knew
from the human being's uniform that he was a telephone-man. There should
have been nothing surprising in the sight of a telephone-man searching
the restaurant. But this man's face was tragic in its alarm and
apprehension. His face was enough to ruin the mirth of any festivity.
Evelyn thought: "This simply won't do." Abruptly he rose from the table,
and as the man happened to come nearer he peremptorily beckoned, and the
man saw the gesture.
"What is it?" Evelyn murmured as the man bent respectfully towards him.
"There's a young lady very ill upstairs, sir, and I was looking for Dr.
Constam. They said he was here, but I can't see him. And I can't see Mr.
Cousin either."
"Very ill, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Very ill."
"What number?"
"365, sir."
"What?"
"365, sir," the man repeated louder.
The table was of course listening.
"I'll attend to it," said Evelyn.
"365. That's one of my old numbers," said Sir Henry Savott, who had
overheard the number.
"Are you staying here, Henry?" Lord Watlington asked.
"No, Harry. I'm in my new house."
"Will you kind people excuse me for a minute?" Evelyn asked. "I'm sorry,
but----"
They excused him. He left the table, thinking: "Though why the devil I
_should_ attend to it I don't know." On his way out he had to pass by
the band, the volume of whose sound shook his poise as the weight of a
cyclonic wind might have shaken it.
CHAPTER XLVIII
TESSA
I
On his way to the third-floor Evelyn in reply to a question learnt from
the liftman that Dr. Constam had after all preceded him to No. 365.
Evidently the doctor had been told by someone other than the
telephone-man that his presence was urgently required up there; and the
probability was that he had left the restaurant before the excited and
confused searcher had begun to look for him. But the liftman could not
say who were the occupants of No. 365; he was a stranger to that
particular lift; on New Year's Eve many individuals were doing other
individuals' work.
Evelyn knocked at the door of No. 365, one of the six or eight finest
suites in the Palace. No answer. He entered. There seemed to be no sign
at all of very grave illness in No. 365: no sound, no stir. The door of
the lighted sitting-room was open. He went in.
Violet Powler was standing in the embrasure of one of the windows,
apparently absorbed in the contemplation of an invisible St. James's
Park. Neither curtains nor blinds had been drawn. The temporary
head-housekeeper turned and saw Evelyn.
"Good evening, sir," she greeted him, with placid formality. She was no
longer the young woman who had smoked a cigarette in his castle on the
night of his homecoming from the Continent. Indeed in the interval he
had not seen her, though he had several times thought of her with
satisfaction, approval and confidence. He was about to demand somewhat
abruptly by what remissness of a chambermaid the blinds had been left up
and the curtains open, but Violet's steady glance moved him to control
the hasty impulse.
"Someone very ill here, I understand. I looked in myself because both
Mr. Cousin and Mr. Pozzi have their hands full."
"Yes, sir. The doctor is in there, and I'm waiting to see if I can do
anything else." She pointed to a bedroom-door.
"Who's staying here?"
"Miss Savott."
"Miss Savott--not Sir Henry Savott's----"
"Yes, sir.... It's a miscarriage, sir," she added, laconic.
The situation called for further exercise of self-control. The
introductory tidings were in themselves astounding. Gracie in the hotel,
and her father unaware! Why had the talk at the dinner-table turned at
once on Gracie? And why had he himself taken the extraordinary course of
enquiring into the affair personally? Could these questions be
convincingly answered with the word 'coincidence'? Or were there in the
universe forces, mysterious correspondences, telepathies, whose
existence he had hitherto always rather disdainfully refused to credit?
He still refused to credit their existence with his reason; but now,
primeval instincts, powerful and authentic, fought within him against
the scepticism of reason, and he was as perturbed as though he had seen
a ghost.
"You don't mean to say that Miss Savott's here and she's----" Even as he
uttered these words he charged himself with clumsy phrasing; but really
for a moment he was somewhat overset: first an astonishing announcement,
and then, right on the top of it, a staggering announcement! And on New
Year's Eve! With what affrighting suddenness had he not been swept from
the world of light pleasure into a world whose fundamentals were crude
pain and disaster!
"Oh no, sir," said Violet calmly, unsmiling. "It's a--friend of hers
that she brought with her. I don't know the name."
He had a tremendous sensation of relief, tempered by a dreadful private
admission that he had made an unspeakable ass of himself.
Sound of pass-key in the outer door. Glimpse of a chambermaid outside. A
lady advanced very quickly into the sitting-room. She wore a scanty
evening frock, lilac-coloured, and a conspicuous, gleaming necklace of
large crimson stones. Clearly she had come straight from the world of
light pleasure.
"Yes?" Evelyn murmured.
"I'm dining in the same party as Dr. Constam," said the reveller,
authoritatively, but in no accent of the West End or Oxford. "He asked
me to follow him as soon as I could. I'm a nurse. Where is the patient?"
Violet made a step towards the bedroom-door; but the reveller reached it
first, opened it, shut it, vanished into the sinister unknown of the
bedroom: all in a few seconds.
"You don't expect to see them in party frocks, do you?" said Evelyn with
a short laugh to cover his nervous diffidence. "But I suppose they're
entitled to wear them just as much as other women."
Violet gave a transient, reserved smile.
"When did this thing begin?" he enquired.
The head-housekeeper related that she had been summoned on the telephone
by Miss Savott herself about half an hour earlier; but she suspected
that the 'thing' had begun some little time before the summons. She had
come downstairs instantly. She had felt helpless, and Miss Savott too.
Of course Miss Savott and herself knew each other of old. The difficulty
had been to get hold of the doctor. Miss Savott was much disturbed at
first, but later she had grown perfectly calm and clear-headed. She knew
something about nursing; and so did Violet; but what could they do till
the doctor arrived? When he did arrive he said that there was no need
for the head-housekeeper to remain in the bedroom. The head-housekeeper
had gathered that the two ladies had had a bad crossing, and that that
was perhaps the cause of the terrible trouble.
"It's amazing what pranks women will play with themselves," said Evelyn,
scandalised and sardonic. "Fancy a woman----! When was the birth
expected, do you know?"
"I think the lady is over six months gone."
"And them crossing the Channel on a rough day in the middle of winter!"
A silence.
The head-housekeeper noticed that the Director's eye was on the windows.
She said:
"The chambermaid told me she had drawn the curtains as usual, but Miss
Savott had undrawn them again. Said she liked to see the lights. That
must have been before the trouble started."
Another silence. Then Evelyn said benevolently:
"I'm surprised to find you on duty to-night, Miss Powler. How is it?"
"Well," said Violet. "It's not one of my evenings, and Miss
Ducker--she's the newest, sir: Sixth--really did want to go to a party
at Hammersmith, so I let her go. I'm easier in my mind if I'm here on
the spot."
"You shouldn't be. You must get over that."
Evelyn offered this advice in a somewhat peremptory tone. He remembered
the time in his experience when he was continuously uneasy during any
absence from whatever organisation he happened to be in control of. He
had conquered the weakness. She must conquer it. As head-housekeeper she
had the right of priority over all her staff to a night off on New
Year's Eve, and for the sake of discipline she ought to have exercised
it. What about her lonely old parents with nobody to let the New Year in
for them? And he would have preferred her not to address him as 'sir.'
He had thought that the joint cigarette-smoking had ended that. Perhaps
in the presence of other members of the staff it might be well for her
to say 'sir'; but when they were by themselves.... How could he give
her the hint? Then he said, more gently:
"I think we might sit down." And he sat down. Violet hesitated. "Sit
down," he repeated, but still gently. She sat.
She had shocked his masculine sensitiveness by the calmness of the use
of the words 'miscarriage' and 'six months gone.' What could or should
she, unmarried, know of such things? Her sister had not been married
either. Absurd! As manageress of a big laundry staff, as
head-housekeeper of a big place like the Palace with its very mixed
assortment of humanity, she must be familiar with all manner of strange
and dubious phenomena. Indeed nothing could be hid from her. The
contents of the minds of such women simply would not bear investigation.
What could such women have to learn about the secret nature of mankind?
He would bet that she knew far more than he did; she knew appalling
things. And not a sign of the knowledge of them on her tranquil,
virtuous face!
"I don't know a lot about miscarriages," he said, after a long silence
(thinking audaciously: "I may as well talk to her in her own language"),
"but it seems to me that that doctor of ours can't get on with his work
without some--er--apparatus that he hasn't got in there. He didn't bring
anything with him, I suppose?"
"No, sir. When he came I don't think he even knew what was the matter."
"Well, it's all very odd to an amateur like me." And he thought: "Why am
I staying here? I can't be of any help. It must be just sheer curiosity
that's keeping me here."
Young Dr. Constam burst into the sitting-room.
"Oh, good evening!" he exclaimed, startled to see Evelyn.
He was laughing. He said nothing else until he had carefully shut the
door. Then he looked at Violet.
"It's no more a miscarriage than my boot. Everything's absolutely normal
so far as _that_ goes. Nothing but an attack of indigestion. I thought
you ladies could never surprise me any more, but I was wrong. The
creature puts out to sea, feels queer, fills herself up with champagne
and God knows what. Train journey and so on. She gets here all right,
and then as soon as the tension is loosed and she has time to think
about herself she has rather acute indigestion. Pains in the tummy. Must
be a miscarriage! Miscarriage be blowed! I tell you I told her I
couldn't help laughing at her. That did her good." He laughed
unfeelingly, almost harshly. "Here I am eating my New Year's dinner, and
I have to rush upstairs because a girl's got the colly-wobbles. The
biscuit is hers, and I hope she'll have twins. I'm just going to find
something to soothe her precious alimentary tract. Shan't be two
minutes. No earthly need for you to stay, Miss Powler. Nurse is
undressing her properly."
"I say," Evelyn stopped the young man as he was going out.
"Yes?"
"Who is she?"
"Ask me another, sir." He was gone.
Violet had obediently risen to leave. Like Evelyn, she was more relieved
than she could show. But, also like Evelyn, she had a sense of
disappointment, of having been shamefully cheated of an anti-climax.
Comedy had replaced tragedy; and in spite of themselves, in spite of
their relief, they both instinctively regretted the change. There was
something magnificent in dire tragedy, in the terror of it, in the
necessity which it laid upon everybody to behave nobly and efficiently.
But comedy demanded naught from their higher selves. All they had to do
now was to fade ingloriously away.
"I'm so glad," said Violet feebly.
"Yes."
"Good night, sir."
"Good night."
Violet went. Evelyn stayed. He was determined to see Gracie Savott. He
was there, and he would remain. He cared not a fig for his party below.
Dr. Constam returned, hurrying into the bedroom with a bottle and a
spoon. The stylish nurse appeared and departed quickly, ignoring the
presence of the panjandrum.
Then Evelyn heard faint rumours of an argument in the next room. The
doctor's voice. Another voice, no doubt Gracie's, though he did not
surely recognise it. Then the doctor reappeared, smiling grimly to
himself. He glanced at his watch and at the clock over the mantelpiece.
"Au revoir," he said to Evelyn, in the masonic tone of one man to
another when the vagaries of women are concerned.
Evelyn waved a hand, as if it were holding his stick.
"I must look a bit odd, sitting here," he thought. But he stayed.
II
The length of the eventless interval tried his patience. But he would
not budge. He could hear automobiles hooting in Birdcage Walk. Till then
his preoccupied ear had not caught a single exterior sound. The
bedroom-door began to open. At last! The door remained half open for
several seconds. Then it opened farther. He heard Gracie's voice, now
quite recognisable, talking to her friend. He prepared a smile to
receive her. Gracie appeared. She was now untidy, almost unkempt, in her
travelling pull-over and short tweed skirt. As soon as he saw the
expression on her face he dismissed the smile from his own. Gracie was
still sternly excited. She did not in the first instant perceive Evelyn.
Evidently she had been expecting the room to be empty.
"Oh!" she gasped, taken aback.
"I just came up to see how things were," he said, rising.
"That was very kind of you," she said absently, and she shook hands
absently. "I wish that doctor of yours had been as kind--I suppose he's
told you what's happened."
"Why!" Evelyn said, nodding an affirmative to the question. He spoke
soothingly, cautiously, as he shut the bedroom-door, which she had
forgotten. "He hasn't been _un_kind, has he?"
"Yes, he has been unkind, very unkind," Gracie answered with emphasis.
And while she spoke Evelyn recalled from the past the rich, changing
tones of that voice. "He laughed. That's what your doctor did. Laughed.
That was all he could do. Doctors are awful, especially when they're
young. Cruel. They don't seem to have any imagination."
"But everything's all right, isn't it?" Evelyn said, even more
cautiously. He thought: "She'll want some handling."
And he contrasted her impetuous, agitated vehemence with what Violet's
demeanour would have been in Gracie's place. He wished for one moment
that he had not stayed. Nevertheless he was admiring Gracie, her
exuberant vitality, her passion--one might almost say her exaltation.
She showed no restraint in his presence. The freedom of her behaviour
could only be explained on the assumption that they were intimate.
Evelyn accepted the assumption. It was based not on their excursion to
Smithfield together, nor on their incursion into the Prince of Wales's
Feathers. To Evelyn at any rate it was based on the angry resentment in
her voice at their last parting, when he had offered to escort her from
his office to the lift, and she had suddenly turned on him like an
infuriated tigress, saying, "No, please! I couldn't bear that!" She
could not possibly have forgotten her rudeness in that encounter. Yet
she was now behaving as though nothing unpleasant had happened between
them.
"Everything's all right," she agreed impatiently. "But that's not the
point. That poor girl's going to have a baby. Which is something, I
hope, in a girl's life. She thought she was in for a horrible mess. I
thought so too. How could she tell it wasn't that, much less me?...
Last May it was--she'd been making love. She's been carrying that baby
for over six months. Fancy what it means, all that. Night and day. Well,
of course you can't. But I can. I've seen it all the time. I tell you
it's simply terrific. And then she thinks she's going to lose the baby.
All that trouble for nothing! Wasted in a most frightful mess! Can't you
feel it? Can't you feel the awfulness of it? Couldn't the doctor feel
it? She was mistaken. She wasn't going to lose the baby. But her
agony--yes, agony--was just as real to her as though she _had_ been
going to lose it. And this doctor of yours merely laughs at her! Jokes!
What does he think a woman is? He doesn't know the first thing about
being a doctor. Any fool who's passed his examinations can tell the
difference between a miscarriage and a bad attack of tummy-ache. But it
takes a man to _feel_. And that doctor can't. He isn't a man. He's
a--there's no word for him.... Teases her about some champagne she'd
had, on the top of some peaches and some sea-sickness medicine! Well, if
you want to know, it was I who gave her the champagne, and I gave her
the peaches. It isn't as if I hadn't had her examined before we started.
My French doctor saw her. He said she was in splendid health. Never seen
anyone better, he said, and it was perfectly safe for her to travel, and
if she did have a bit of a shaking up it wouldn't do her any harm. And
the voyage wasn't really so bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't bad,
though it was rather worse than we expected, I admit. And she was quite
all right till she had the champagne on the train. Even here she walked
by herself to the lift. She was so much all right that I went down to
the grill-room to eat something. But as soon as I'd gone her nerves went
queer and the pains began. She rang and I was fetched. I can understand
it well enough."
"Yes, yes," Evelyn agreed, appeasingly. He felt as guilty as if he had
been Dr. Constam. "Who is this young lady?"
Gracie hesitated.
"Tessa," she answered in a low tone,
"Tessa?"
"Yes, Tessa Tye. My maid."
"I don't think I've seen her."
"Of course you've seen her. She came into the hotel with me that morning
when you were standing in the hall. Very pretty. And rather smart too.
Don't you remember. She's pretty enough for any man to remember."
"Oh yes," Evelyn did remember. A lackadaisical and self-conscious
creature. Pretty? Yes. But he wouldn't have said very pretty. He was
thunderstruck. He said: "Married?... Or not?"
"Why do you say 'or not'? Why shouldn't she be married? Can't maids be
married? Can't they have their own lives like other people? However, she
isn't married, as it happens. That's why I made up my mind to look after
her. It may interest you to know--I haven't told anyone else--to know
that when we got here that first morning she tried to commit suicide.
Opening a vein with a pair of scissors. Yes, that was how she felt then.
That was why I kept you waiting before you took me to Smithfield. Oh, I
didn't find out till later what it was she'd been up to. I thought it
was an accident with the scissors. But I got it out of her in the end,
when I noticed her body and it was staring me in the face! I couldn't
believe it at first--you never do.... Some half-English, half-Belgian
rotter she'd fallen in love with in Paris. She fell for him and then he
ran away. She didn't know his address. I doubt if she knew his real
name. She carried that baby to New York with me and back again. And I
hadn't guessed--it wasn't till after we'd gone to Paris again from here
that she confessed. I wasn't going to throw her over then. No! What I
had to do was to put some self-respect into her. I took her to St.
Cloud. It suited me, because I wanted to be quiet to write my book. A
little hotel there. Only one bathroom for the two of us. I called her a
friend of mine, Mrs. Tye. I could see her growing before my eyes. We
made no bones about it. We went around for walks just as if it was the
most ordinary thing in the world. And so it is. When we left St. Cloud
you could see how she was half a mile off. Some of them must have
noticed it in the hall downstairs this afternoon, though she was wearing
a big cloak. She's been maiding me just the same. It wouldn't have done
for her to be idle. And the doctor, I mean the French one, said it would
do her all the good in the world to work--stoop, run about--you know.
And she's a different girl. It's set her up. She used to be anæmic and
namby-pamby. All that's gone. It'll be the making of her."
"But why have you brought her here to London?"
"I brought her because I had to come about my book. And I thought we
should be as safe here in a big hotel as anywhere." Gracie paused on a
self-conscious half-smile. "I couldn't leave her behind. She'd have
fretted to death by herself. And I don't quite see why my business
should be held up because she's going to have a baby. She's got to take
the rough with the smooth, the same as the rest of us. Don't think I
coddle her. I shall be coddling her in about ten weeks' time, I expect.
But not yet. We shall only be here for a few days. I've made all the
arrangements at St. Cloud." Gracie tossed her head as it were defiantly,
and sat down.
Evelyn, agitated, astounded, admiring, very respectful, walked to and
fro in the room. He could not express his sensations. "Not now. Not
yet," he kept saying to himself.
"Does your father know?" he asked, in a voice artificially negligent.
"No. Of course he doesn't know. Why?"
"Well, he's dining with me at this moment. That's all."
"Here? In the hotel?"
"In the restaurant. Him, and your friend Mrs. Penkethman and Lord
Watlington."
"But I heard from him at Christmas. I thought he was going to the
Bahamas for a holiday."
"He may be. But he's dining with me to-night. I left them to come up
here."
"Does he know I'm here?"
"He does not."
"Is he staying here in the hotel?" She seemed to be really apprehensive.
"No, he's in the new house, so he told me."
"And I haven't seen it." Genuine relief in her tone. "Well, he must be
frightfully taken with the new house. This is the first New Year he's
spent in London for years. If I'd known he was to be in London I
shouldn't have----"
The bedroom-door opened--was pulled open from the other side. Evelyn was
near the window, and Gracie's face, as she looked at him, was turned a
little away from the door. Tessa entered. Evelyn saw her first, and
before Tessa saw him. She was wearing a peignoir, splendid enough to be
one of Gracie's. It was boldly tied above the waist. No concealment of
her condition. But a shameless display of it. The central character of
the piece was indeed superbly enormous. Pale, worn, pretty face. Tousled
bright hair. Thin bust. And then the swelling curves of approaching
motherhood. Evelyn was thrilled. Tears came suddenly into his eyes. He
blushed. "'Interesting' is the right word for it," he thought, thrilled
again and again. He exulted in the girl's appearance; at the same time
it put a deep solemnity into him. All this in a fraction of a second.
"Tessa!" cried Gracie, outraged. She had followed the direction of
Evelyn's acutely perturbed glance. "What in God's name are you doing? Go
back to bed this instant and keep warm."
Tessa had now seen Evelyn. She gave a faint cry of alarm and vanished.
Gracie jumped up and shut the door with a bang. The large room with its
plenteous and ornate furniture, and its dozen electric lights, was
emptied of a capital presence, impressive, foolish and pitiful.
"Fools girls are!" Gracie exclaimed, and went on quickly: "Well, I think
you'd better go back to your dinner now. And mind, don't say a word to
father. He'd go in right off at the deep end. You don't know father."
"Very well. I won't," said Evelyn. He thought: "What separate lives they
lead! And her mother--somewhere in the background." They shook hands.
"Good night. I think you're wonderful. This is the greatest story I ever
heard." What he appreciated as much as anything else in her recital was
its breath-taking matter-of-factness.
She said:
"Everyone's wonderful when it comes to the point."
CHAPTER XLIX
NEW YEAR'S MORNING
I
As, in the restaurant, Evelyn with difficulty made his way back towards
the table of which he was the host, he saw from the intent faces of Lord
Watlington and Sir Henry Savott that these two were engaged in some sort
of recriminatory argument, while Nancy Penkethman was glancing aside as
if trying to dissociate herself from the affray. The rather
simple-minded Nancy, however, was not a very good actress. Her
expression betrayed a certain constraint. Yet it betrayed also a certain
satisfaction, which sprang from her intuitional knowledge of the
pleasing fact that she herself was the prime cause, though of course not
the occasion, of the discord.
"So glad to see you again!" she greeted Evelyn charmingly, and at the
same time bestowed upon Harry and Henry in equal proportions a
charmingly mischievous smile.
"I'm extremely sorry to have been so long," said Evelyn, feeling that he
had not arrived a moment too soon. "I really couldn't help it. You know,
you never do know what will happen next in a hotel."
The demeanour of the other two men changed instantly from the bellicose
to the perfectly peaceful. And indeed their material interests and their
prestige were too closely interwoven to permit of anything worse than a
tiff occurring between them; assuredly no woman on earth could have
estranged them, for each of them had a hard realistic sense of the
relative unimportance of women, beautiful or plain, in the world of
their ideals.
"We were beginning to suspect a fire had broken out somewhere upstairs,
and you were keeping it dark for the sake of business," said Lord
Watlington with a laugh; and Evelyn laughed.
"No," he said shortly. "It wasn't a fire." He perceived now the risks
which he ran in concealing from Savott the presence of Gracie in the
hotel. Savott and he were working together in the enormous enterprise of
the Merger and on a basis of the utmost candour. Sometimes they even
used their Christian names to one another. Supposing that Savott were to
discover Evelyn's uncandid reticence concerning Gracie, and their
cards-on-the-table friendship were to be imperilled! Pooh! Savott could
discover nothing. Gracie would be off again in a day or two. Moreover,
it was no part of Evelyn's duty to be aware of the identity of every
visitor in the largest luxury hotel on earth. Withal, Gracie evidently
suffered from a characteristic girlish deficiency in the sense of
danger. Pooh! Dissension between father and daughter could not
conceivably bring about dissension between Savott and himself....
Why, if Gracie seriously wished to avoid her father, had she chosen to
come to just the Imperial Palace? Her stated reason for doing so was not
very credible.... Evelyn's thoughts ran on in this vein. But
absolutely no clue to them could be seen in his bearing. He was a master
of duplicity when circumstances demanded it.
The restaurant, if as noisy as ever, was less crowded. A ceaseless
procession of revellers was passing out in obedience to a large,
painted, pointing hand and a notice which said: "_Ball-room.
Attractions._"
"I think now is the moment for us to go and see these mysterious
'attractions,'" Evelyn suggested. "It will be midnight before we know
where we are, and by midnight we simply must be here again."
"But your dinner, darling!" said Nancy Penkethman, all of whose
acquaintances were her darlings. "You haven't eaten a mouthful."
"No, I haven't," Evelyn concurred. "Unless soup, fish and entrée are
worthy to be called a mouthful. But there'll be some supper after Auld
Lang Syne."
Nancy having lighted a new cigarette, they rose and went, Nancy and
Evelyn in front. The high financiers behind were now fondly Henrying and
Harrying. Henry's flushed organism was engaged in the true business of a
gourmand at the end of a good luscious meal. Harry, as usual with him,
had eaten little, but he had honoured the approach of the New Year with
a fair number of whiskies.
The broad corridor leading to the ball-room section of the public
apartments was full of jostling people, men and women, in the same
condition as Harry and Henry: relaxed, released into a careless and
quasi-shameless jollity, with neckties somewhat disarranged, frocks
somewhat disarranged, splendid comic hats awry, ill-controlled mouths,
loose smiles and laughs, loud tongues. Evelyn could feel their bodies,
male and female, against his, see their faces very close: humanity in
the mass, odorous, multitudinous, flippant, saucy, brazen, free of
social discipline. The too populous corridor was like a suffocating
tunnel made light and brilliant by pale toilettes, rouge, exposed flesh
and jewels.
The party reached a large ante-room, round whose walls had been ranged a
series of concave and convex mirrors which, distorting everything,
changed beauty into the horribly grotesque, dignity into ridicule,
decency into the obscene. The reflections excited high mirth and salvos
of hysterical shrieks. This, the first of the attractions, was an
immense success of humour.
Next, the ball-room, which, with space for two hundred couples to dance,
contained only seventy or eighty persons, who watched a stage-spectacle
of three youths throwing crimson, glittering Indian clubs at one another
apparently with intent to kill. But the flying, revolving clubs seemed
to have a magic life and volition of their own; they flew into hands,
criss-crossed in parabolic curves, lodged themselves incredibly between
arms and torsos, dropped unerringly into pockets. They could make no
mistakes; they were tireless on their unending shuttle-journeys to and
fro; the youths alone gave signs of effort and strain beneath their
stage-smiles. The spectacle was a dazzling exhibition of dexterity on
the part of the clubs, assisted by the three youths. But the sparse
audience, while applauding at intervals, did not increase.
The third and greatest attraction was in a third room beyond. This room
was so jammed with spectators that Evelyn's foursome could not get into
it at all. They had difficulty even in maintaining a position at the
wide doors. Guffaws, giggles, shouts rose out of the dense floor of
heads like invisible raucous birds. The heat was tropic. At the end of
the room, on a dais, Punch, popping up and down in a small oblong of a
proscenium, was exhibiting his domestic and conjugal existence with
Judy, policemen, maids and executioners. Murders were being committed at
express speed; the law was derided; and Toby watched the farcical
tragedies with canine indifference.
Nancy, pouting, complained that she could see nothing. Suddenly Lord
Watlington picked her up by her slim waist, and perched her on his
shoulders--a feat which persons in the vicinity warmly applauded with
cheers. Nancy laughed like a schoolgirl. The drama went on and on; and
still on; repeating itself. Nobody was bored for a moment: everybody was
passionately interested in the fate of wooden puppets.
Then, just behind the foursome, a matchless organ-voice, triumphing
easily over the din, cried solemnly, warningly, imperatively: "Ladies
and gentlemen. A quarter to midnight." It was the voice of the renowned
chief toast-master of the Imperial Palace, in a red coat and
knee-breeches. Lord Watlington deposited Nancy on the parquet; otherwise
the admonition was ignored. But in a moment the curtain fell on the
career of Punch, and at once the room began to empty. The foursome were
shoved backwards with violence.
"What are you laughing at?" Nancy asked Evelyn as she smoothed down her
skirts; she feared that something was amiss with her attire or her face.
"Punch and Judy of course," Evelyn reassured her.
It was not the truth. He was laughing, quietly to himself, at the
thought of the mistake of Tessa and Gracie about Tessa's condition.
Suddenly it had struck him as extraordinarily funny. He sympathised with
Dr. Constam's unrepressed mirth. It was the funniest thing he had ever
come across. And Gracie might say what she chose in protest. It was
_really_ funny. But to savour its funniness your sense of humour had to
be robust. The pilgrimage back to the restaurant was a retreat from
Moscow; people fell by the way; insecure possessions were torn off in
the mêlée and some of them never seen again.
II
In the restaurant as, breathless, the party struggled to their table and
dropped into chairs, the great clock showed five minutes to midnight.
Theatre chorus-girls dressed as ballet-dancers were entering; they
carried clusters of balloons high on the ends of long sticks, and men
stood on chairs to take balloons; explosions resounded. Processions of
trumpeters trumpeting, and of beef-eaters not eating beef, entered the
restaurant with excessive pomp. The band played "Tipperary." The colour,
the noise, the heat were all increased. Every light went out, except the
festooned Chinese lanterns and the illuminated dial of the great clock.
In the dusk last loiterers scrambled to their places.
The minute-hand of the great clock crept up to the hour-hand until the
two joined on XII. The band was stilled. The chief toast-master, in
front of the lower storeys of the clock, raised his mighty arm. The
revellers obediently stood to their feet. The band resumed, in a new
strain. Nancy crossed her thin bare arms. The three men hesitated,
shamefaced. Then Nancy's right hand took Evelyn's left, and then eight
hands were clasped in the traditional fashion. And every revelling hand
at every table was joined to another, and soon arms were moving up and
down to the rhythm of the music. The three men hated the ceremony. Only
Nancy in her simplicity enjoyed it. She sang first; Sir Henry Savott
then sang loudly; Evelyn hummed; Lord Watlington remained obstinately
mum in the sheltering dusk. Gradually the revellers lost their shamed
self-consciousness, and sang and wagged their arms with a will.
The waiters around the room, and the two black-robed girls behind a
control desk in a corner, had no share in the grave rite. Serious,
preoccupied by their duties, they were cut off from revelling humanity.
The advent of New Years was naught to them.
The ageless song ended. The lights blindingly went up. The band jumped
gloriously into the feverish waltz from "The Meistersingers." The
waiters started into life. The revellers shook hands and exchanged
fervent good wishes. Seven minutes had passed, but the hands of the
great clock had not budged. They marked an everlasting midnight. They
would not venture into the New Year. Time stood still.
A young man in a wondrous white waistcoat advanced smiling and
victorious towards Evelyn's table. He bowed indiscriminately to the
party.
"Well, sir?" he addressed Evelyn.
"All my congratulations. Not a single hitch. A Happy New Year," said
Evelyn.
It was the Bands-and-Cabaret-manager, Jones-Wyatt, who had been
responsible for all the complex arrangements except those connected with
food and drink.
"Thank you, sir. Same to you." He bowed and retired, content.
A little later Lord Watlington made an abrupt sign to Nancy Penkethman,
who submissively rose.
"Well, my dear host," said Lord Watlington very urbanely and smilingly
expansive. "It's all been extremely impressive. I admire your
organisation as much as I like your hospitality. Ever so many thanks.
You'll excuse me if I go. I can't stand up against late hours."
"So sweet of you, Mr. Orcham," said Nancy, clinging to Evelyn's hand.
"I've simply loved it. I never had such a New Year's Eve before. Thank
you ten million times."
"Very good of you to come," said Evelyn lamely.
"By-by, Henry."
"By-by, Harry."
Henry put a chaste kiss on Nancy's cheek. The departing pair were gone.
When Harry decided to go he always acted on the decision with ruthless
promptitude.
Then Henry went, offering the same excuse as Harry.
Evelyn was alone in the renewed multitudinous champagne-orgy of the
restaurant. But within less than a minute Sir Henry Savott returned,
rather bustling. He would have passed as perfectly sober had he not been
a trifle too sure that he was perfectly sober.
"I say, Evelyn," he said brusquely. "What day are you going back to
Paris? You are going, aren't you?"
"Yes. But I can't settle the date till I hear that the Concorde
manager--what's his name, Laugier?--has got over his attack of flu and
can answer questions."
"I can tell you that now," said Sir Henry. "He was back at work to-day.
A fellow told me before I came here to-night, who'd seen him this
morning at the Concorde."
"Oh! Well, then, I may go as soon as I've wired him and got his answer.
I'll telephone you."
"I'll see you before you start?"
"Certainly."
Sir Henry departed for the second time that New Year's morning. Evelyn
could explain his return only on the supposition that he had preferred
to keep out of the entrance-hall until Nancy and Harry were clear away.
Cappone, as fresh as dawn, arrived at the table and suggested that the
panjandrum had insufficiently eaten. Cappone could watch over the eating
of a thousand guests, and not least of the panjandrum's. Evelyn agreed
to consider a couple of kidneys, which Cappone, having received
congratulations from his chief on the complete smoothness of the jollity
of the grand revel, went off into the kitchen to order personally from
Maître Planquet.
The revel could not die. It was now more vivacious than ever. With the
kind consent of the Licensing Authority, champagne and other alcohol was
still being generously served and quaffed. And a fair proportion of
guests, having convinced themselves that the New Year's Eve dinner was
finished, were starting the New Year well with a New Year's morning
supper. When the kidneys were eaten, however, a few craven roysterers
were already leaving, and a deserted table here and there showed plain
white. The great clock was now more than an hour late....
She was a unique young woman, was Gracie. Her phrase, "I had to put some
self-respect into her," stuck in Evelyn's mind. She evidently had a
sense of fundamentals. She had done, was doing, a marvellous work with
the silly, tragic Tessa. He thought of the two of them up there in suite
365--and the unborn. He pictured the luxuriant embossed figure of the
foolish Tessa, one instant in the bedroom-doorway. If it could suddenly
appear in the midst of the hot, wild-fire revel presided over by
Bacchus, Pan, Venus and all the gods of luxury--what a sensation, what a
menacing reminder of the inexorableness of life!
Why had Gracie chosen the Imperial Palace? She had a sense of
fundamentals, yes; but there were streaks of folly in her wisdom. He
felt obscurely that she was a girl capable of enormities which might be
magnificent, but they would be enormities all the same. She frightened
his deep prudence.
He rose and strolled through the deafening chatter and clatter and
tinkling towards the kitchens, still in full heated activity, there to
bestow upon Maître Planquet and three important sub-chefs a reward which
could not be measured in money. When he slowly re-entered the restaurant
a refreshed orchestra had just replaced an orchestra which had blown and
scraped and drummed itself dry. The orchestras--he had been forgetting
them! After a moment he went downstairs to the band-lounge, a
nondescript, large room where a score of aristocratic, exhausted toilers
in evening dress, whose earnest efforts were requited with five hundred
pounds a week from the Imperial Palace treasury, lounged in easy-chairs
and on sofas, and languidly smoked cigarettes and imbibed drinks served
to them by their own waiter and valet. None but the conductor seemed to
recognise Evelyn in the haze.
"Boys, here's the boss!" said the conductor succinctly, after he had
condescended to the panjandrum's hand. "Wish him a Happy New Year." The
musicians lifted themselves reluctantly from the chairs and sofas, and
in turn condescended to the panjandrum's outstretched hand, and drank in
eagerly the sweetness of his prepared phrases.... Duty done! The
panjandrum thought of the grill-room and wistful Ceria. To the
grill-room then, via a couple of service-bars, a glass and cutlery
reserve, down more stone steps--and there his accustomed ear could catch
the faint whir of a dynamo deep in the earth's entrails--up steps, up
more steps, along a narrow stone corridor, bang into the mirrored
resplendence of the great entrance-hall, across which a stream of coated
and cloaked and subdued revellers had by this time set outwards. In the
grill-room corridor he met Ceria himself. Exchange of good wishes.
"You finished?"
"Nearly, sir." Ceria pointed through the glazed wall. The interior of
the grill-room was an expanse of plain white tables; only three or four
tables were occupied; there were twice as many waiters as guests.
"Well, you've had a good evening."
"Wonderful, sir."
"Going to have a look at the restaurant, eh?"
Ceria unwillingly admitted that this was so. They went back together to
the foyer and glanced through the curtains. A pallid and fatigued
page-boy accosted Ceria with a message. Ceria's appreciation of the
rich, variegated, intemperate scene was indifferent.
"Noisy," said he with his wistful smile, and dismissed it.
The great clock was now nearly two hours late; it seemed to dwell with
serene self-approval in the eternal stillness of divine perfection. The
pair had to move aside from the opening between the curtains to give
room for a group of departing roysterers.
Evelyn thought of Violet Powler, nun-like and secluded far aloft in her
bedroom on Eighth, probably asleep. Ceria bade him good night. Yet
another ten minutes and the panjandrum was standing behind the
Reception-counter in the hall, talking to Reyer. He talked to the
deferential Reyer for a long time. They watched the brilliant outgoing
stream dwindle and dwindle, then increase in a sudden spate, and dwindle
again. Now was the harvest of the cloak-rooms. Evelyn heard, from beyond
the ever-revolving doors, the hooting of cars; he could see their lights
flashing.
He thought:
"Why the devil did that girl choose this place to come to? It couldn't
have been because she had a notion she might perhaps come across me
again here, could it? She never apologised to me for her damnable
rudeness about her party."
As for himself, he wished to see her again, but not his should be the
first move towards a meeting. Never! He would die rather. More and more
revellers carried forth their uneasy consciences into the chill night
air to confront the New Year and imagine good resolutions and the
turning over of new leaves. The fête was done.
CHAPTER L
IN THE RAIN
I
"You remember you promised to go one night to that Shaftesbury Express
lunch-and-supper-counter place. Have you been?"
Rather an abrupt stand-and-deliver sort of an opening for a telephone
conversation at 10 p.m., thought Evelyn, startled. He was alone in his
office, smoking a cigar and drinking mineral water.
"What on earth place do you mean?" he parried, quite intimately
responding to Gracie's tone. The talk between them on the previous
evening had somehow re-established their intimacy of Smithfield and the
Prince of Wales's Feathers. But he knew very well what place she meant.
He had forgotten Charlie Jebson's proud announcement of his position as
a restaurateur. She had not forgotten it. Nor, probably, he said to
himself sardonically, had she forgotten the fine masculine figure of
young Charlie Jebson.
"Oh, dear! What a memory!" came the reply, and Evelyn heard her light
laugh. She recalled the incident to him.
"Oh yes!" he said. "I do remember something of the kind."
"Well, have you been?"
"No. It's never crossed my mind from that day to this." He thought: "I
bet anything she wants me to take her there to-night!"
"Well, don't you think you ought to go? A promise is a promise."
"But surely it was _you_ that promised to go," he fibbed.
"Now don't pretend!" came the rich voice, very firmly. It might have
been a kindly reproof from an elder sister! To her he was evidently no
panjandrum; and he enjoyed not being a panjandrum. "You know as well as
I do it was you who promised."
"Well, one of these days I will go," he said vaguely.
"That's just the same as saying you haven't the slightest intention of
ever going. I should like to go to-night. Let's go." Cajolery in the
tone. "Are you in evening dress?"
"I am not," he said. "I was in evening dress till pretty nearly three
o'clock this morning, and I'm taking a night off, if you've no
objection."
"That's splendid," came the voice, eagerness in it. "It _will_ be a
night off. If you'd been in your glad rags, we could hardly have gone.
An Express counter isn't quite a suitable atmosphere for a boiled shirt.
Shall I come down?"
"But listen----"
"No, I won't listen," came the voice. "Because I know exactly what you'd
say if I let you. That's perfectly all right. You and daddy are so thick
in these days, it's perfectly all right for your highness to be seen
with me anywhere at any hour. And you needn't worry about not telling
daddy that last night you knew I was here. If he gets to hear you can
easily say you only found out to-day. Be a man. And don't be so damned
dignified."
The young voice was allaying all his unspoken qualms and fears. The
exhortation to shed his damned dignity was a challenge to him which his
courage was bound to accept.
"It would be a bit of a lark," he said, with a laugh.
"I'm coming down this minute," the voice answered. "Where are you?"
"In my office. But look here. Is your car handy? Mine is not."
"Car!" the voice exclaimed. "We can't arrive at an Express counter in
Shaftesbury Avenue in a car. It simply isn't done. We'll go in a taxi,
of course."
"I'll be in the entrance-hall. Try not to keep me waiting more than a
couple of hours."
Evelyn picked up his hat, muffler and overcoat from the chair where he
had thrown them. He tied the muffler twice round his neck, raised the
collar of his overcoat, stuck his hat on one side, shoved his ungloved
hands into his deep pockets, and went forth for the bit of a lark. He
felt uplifted, and found the hall by contrast more than half dead after
the late strain of the New Year's Eve fête. A sparse attendance in the
restaurant. Even the distant band sounded as if it might shortly expire
in a sigh. At the doors Long Sam, the head night-porter, was yawning in
the lax ennui of the day after.
"Taxi please, Sam."
"Yes, sir," said Sam Butcher, quickened. "Taxi," he repeated to a
janissary. "Lively."
The doors spun, the janissary dashed out, stumbling on the steps.
"If I'm wanted, Sam," said Evelyn to Sam, "I'm going out with Miss
Savott to Jebson's restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue. I don't expect to
be more than an hour at the outside."
After all, why attempt to conceal the lark? The name of Savott was now
illustrious in the hotel. Why not be grandly, audaciously open about the
lark? At the same moment Gracie appeared, uplifted too, and hurrying.
All in three or four minutes the lark had been conceived and brought to
birth. Astonishing. Frightening. But jolly. You never knew what would
happen next with that incalculable girl.
"D'ye mean that little place close by the cinema?" the taxi-driver
asked, and when told by Evelyn that that little place was indeed the
place meant he gave an "Oh!" whose tone indicated that as a man of the
world he had ceased to be startled at the vagaries of people of fashion.
At the same time he lifted his eyebrows to indicate a mild, weary
criticism of people of fashion who would leave an Imperial Palace in
order to visit an Express counter near a cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue.
The conversation in the bumping, danger-affronting taxi was constrained,
did not flow easily. Gracie said that Tessa was perfectly well again,
and was packing for departure the next morning.
"It does her good to bestir herself a bit," said Gracie.
"I believe that is the theory," said Evelyn.
"It's the practice--with Tessa," said Gracie.
The Express Counter was very small: a long high counter running down one
side of a narrow room, ending with a partition at the farther extremity;
on the other side of the room three or four tiny tables, with a couple
of chairs apiece. A profusion of electricity. Not a soul visible, except
a blonde lady of thirty odd, dressed in black, with a thin gold necklet
and a gold wrist-watch. She might have passed for a floor-housekeeper of
the Imperial Palace.
"_C'est très sympathique_," said Gracie at once. "I love the
lampshades."
"Yes," Evelyn said, accepting her verdict cheerfully. "Shall we sit
here?" He put his hand on a chair at one of the tiny tables.
"No," said Gracie. "We must sit at the bar. I adore a bar."
They took high chairs at the bar, and lodged their feet comfortably on a
brass rail provided for customers of stature less than two yards and a
half. Gracie loosed her leather coat. Evelyn did not even take off his
hat; there was no accommodation for it.
"Now," said Evelyn to the bar-woman. "What do you serve here, please?"
"Well, sir. We serve the finest sandwiches in London. Salads. Oysters.
And the finest chops and steaks in London--but only at lunch-time--I
mean the chops and steaks. And cheeses of course--any hour." Having
examined and assessed and placed her customers, she waved a bare forearm
towards a range of sandwiches imprisoned in glass on a shelf behind her.
"I doubt if I've ever had the finest sandwiches in London," said Evelyn,
putting his hat on the counter.
"I think oysters," said Gracie, "and stout."
"Stout? At night? Disturb my sleep," said Evelyn.
"And what if it does?" Gracie murmured, lighting a cigarette. "Stout is
such fun, and all fun has to be paid for."
"Two dozen oysters and two stouts, please," said Evelyn, acquiescent.
And in that instant of abandonment to adventure, it seemed to him that
he really did not care whether his sleep would be disturbed or not.
"Two dozen Whits and two draught stouts," the bar-woman called to
someone hidden beyond the partition. "Very mild to-night," she added, to
her customers.
"Ye-es," Evelyn said. He was not an expert in the art of small-talk
across counters.
"Windy," said Gracie. "Gusty."
"Well," said the bar-woman, glancing at the leather coat. "If you're
motoring that doesn't matter--unless of course it's a touring car."
"I was thinking of the sea."
"Oh! Channel to-morrow morning. Yes, I suppose so. I've never been over
myself, that is, I mean since I was a baby-in-arms. I began my
travelling early, I did, and left it off early too." All three laughed.
"They do say there's nothing like travelling for sharpening your wits.
But what I say is a bar's pretty good in that line." They all laughed
again.
'Express' was a fit adjective for the Shaftesbury. The bar-woman
disappeared and returned immediately with two foamy stouts. And the next
minute a well-dressed man appeared with two plates of oysters and the
proper accompaniments thereto. He thanked the customers for accepting
them, then vanished, and the bar-woman retired to sit on a stool at the
end of the counter nearest the noisy Avenue. Peace and pleasantness
within the bright Shaftesbury. Evelyn was happy and excited, as he might
have been in a foreign town. He thought, and not for the first time:
"What a rut I live in!"
"I'm not hungry," he murmured confidentially.
"Neither am I," Gracie murmured. "But not one of these oysters is going
to be left. If you'd only ordered a dozen between us I should have asked
for more."
She blew away some of the foam from her stout, exposing the deep, dark
liquid beneath, and drank, and wiped her mouth gingerly with a coloured
paper napkin taken from a pile of napkins laid handy. They went on
murmuring confidentially. Anybody out of hearing might have thought that
they were exchanging emotional secrets charged with terrific importance,
instead of remarks about the excellence of the oysters, the freshness of
the brown bread-and-butter, and the sweet velvet of the stout. The
adventure was delicious, bizarre, romantic. Evelyn so felt it, and he
knew that the incalculable Gracie so felt it.
He thought: "I wish I could get past her defences. There's no getting
near her"--though their knees almost touched in front of the counter.
"She must have a sort of a liking for me, otherwise she wouldn't run
after me the way she does. She's very curt and domineering. She's
infernally independent. She's an egotist, can't be anything else. And
yet--Tessa! She isn't being very egotistical over Tessa. She's taking
risks there. But that may be egotism too. Wants to flatter herself she's
making a grand gesture, defying convention, _being herself_, going
around with a maid as big as a barrel, and so on and so on. 'Maid':
that's good."
He was telling himself that his estimate of Gracie was absolutely
impartial, realistic, perhaps cynical. As she was not looking at
him--she seemed determined not to meet his eyes--he could look at her.
Benevolent expression, or the reverse? Who could say? All he could be
sure of was that she had distinction and pride. Her clothes were
distinguished; her untidiness was distinguished; she ate, and she drank
stout, with distinction. And with distinction in her curved fingers she
raised an oyster off its shell, slipped it into her mouth. Whence this
distinction? Was it from the curves of the fingers, the hands, the arms,
the body--the slow, reflective movements of the jaws as she munched? No,
he was no nearer the core of her mystery. He was checked by her
barricades. Nobody ever comprehended anybody; and certainly he refused
the ridiculous notion that women were more mysterious than men. She was
cogitating about something--God knew what! Why in heaven's name had she
lured him out? To eat oysters and drink stout, covering her cogitations
with a thin layer of murmurous banalities? It would serve her
tantalising beauty right if he abducted her, seduced her by force, and
then said casually: "There now! You can go back to your cogitations
again. You've got something to think about now."
He murmured: "I suppose as you're leaving to-morrow you've finished the
business with your publisher to-day?"
"Yes," she said. "That's all right."
"Well," he said. "There's one thing. With your name on the title-page
the book's bound to make a stir in the world."
She raised her face and looked him solemnly in the eyes.
"My name won't be on the title-page."
"No? Why not?"
"Surely you don't imagine," she murmured. "Surely you don't imagine for
a moment I'd let my book be helped by the name of a racing motorist and
my father's name and the name of a girl who knows all the smart people
in London! Because if you do you're wrong. My book will have to stand by
itself--or fall. I shall take a pseudonym. That's what I came over
about. My publisher was making a fuss over that very point.... He's
given in. So it's all right." Her tone had more than solemnity; it was
religious; it vibrated with the formidableness of mystical passion.
Evelyn was daunted, apologetic, admiring; he had a thrill.
"You're perfectly right!" he murmured gravely, and in his tone too there
was emotion.
Gracie smiled; a divine warm stillness in her smile, and a magic power
in it lifting him up. For an instant he held the key to the enigma...
It slipped from him.
"I knew you'd know what I mean," she said. "Some people simply don't
know the language you're talking. It's just jabber to them." Then she
turned towards the distant bar-woman, who was reading a paper-bound
novel, and asked loudly: "Can you tell us what time Mr. Jebson will be
here to-night?"
The bar-woman rose and walked half-way along the length of the counter
before calling out:
"Jim, what time will Mr. Jebson come in to-night, d'you know?"
And the answering baritone voice from beyond the partition:
"The governor won't be along to-night. He telephoned."
"Can my husband or me do anything?" the bar-woman amiably enquired.
"No, thanks," said Gracie. "It's nothing. Only we know Mr. Jebson, and
we thought if he happened to be here----"
Evelyn was glad that Charlie Jebson had telephoned. He did not desire
the presence of the imposingly masculine Charles complicating the
situation. And how could Gracie swing so abruptly from her book to
Charlie Jebson? There was a lamenting disappointment, rather desolate,
in her 'No, thanks,' to the bar-woman. No wonder the key had slipped
from him! True, they had come to the Shaftesbury to see Mr. Charles
Jebson. Nevertheless Gracie's transition from her book to Charlie was
too swift not to irk Evelyn's sensitiveness.
"Well," said she after a few moments. "I've finished my oysters,
and"--she stopped to drink the remainder of the stout--"I've finished my
stout."
"You'd like to go?"
"We may as well. But you've not finished yours."
"Can't," said Evelyn.
The bar-woman approached them, novel in hand this time, and Evelyn paid
the bill, which was very modest compared with the scale of charges for
no better oysters and no better stout at the Imperial Palace.
"Thank you," said the bar-woman indifferently. As the bell of the
cash-register rang she added: "What name shall I say to Mr. Jebson?"
Evelyn shook his head with a faint deprecating smile: "Doesn't matter."
"Oh, darling!" Gracie protested benevolently. "I'm sure Mr. Jebson would
be delighted to know you've called." And to the woman: "Mr. Orcham, of
the Imperial Palace Hotel." The bar-woman, suddenly excited, had a
sharp, simpering attack of self-consciousness. She was no longer the
experience-worn, life-weary, detached, disdainful spectator of life. Ten
or fifteen years dropped from her age in an instant. She became an
ingenuous schoolgirl, bridling, smirking from innocent pride in the
august identity of her customer. Evidently she had heard of Mr. Orcham,
and of his importance in the meat-trade, from the proprietor of the
Shaftesbury Express Counter. Her husband peeped out from behind the
partition.
"Mr. Jebson will be very proud, and very sorry to have missed you, sir.
Good night. Good night, madam."
II
Evelyn felt foolish as they left the room. He also felt rather resentful
against Gracie for having called him 'darling' in front of the
bar-woman. In Gracie's world 'darling' had no meaning, except in so far
as it constituted some sort of assurance that the user of it did not
regard the person addressed as absolutely repulsive and hateful. But the
bar-woman was certain to misunderstand it. However, Evelyn would not
argue the matter critically. The society, at a bar, of girls such as
Gracie had its obvious disadvantages, which the fatalistic philosopher
would accept in a lofty spirit of resignation. And at worst 'darling,'
considered as an epithet, was less offensive than the 'sweetie' which on
a previous occasion she had applied to him. He silently swallowed the
rising poison of his resentment.
As they emerged on to the pavement two taxis drew up, and nine strong,
full-bodied men miraculously emerged from them, occupying the pavement
with their hearty, free masculinity unencumbered by women.
"We'll take one of these," said Evelyn.
"Can't we walk?"
"Of course, darling." That was his sole comment on her improper use of a
word. Gracie ignored it.
The squad of men one by one entered Mr. Charles Jebson's establishment.
The dead hour between nine-thirty and ten-thirty was ending. The
bar-woman would need all her high faculties of domination, diplomatic
retort and express serving; for the nine were every one of them
evidently experts in bars--not simple, diffident amateurs like Evelyn.
"It's going to snow," said Evelyn.
"Oh no!"
"It is snowing," said Evelyn.
"Is it? Well, never mind. I love walking in a snow-storm. Don't you?"
"Yes. But you'll get your feet wet."
"I can change."
"So can I."
They walked briskly side by side. At short intervals down the Avenue
taxis were waiting in long lines for the emptying of theatres, and in
the cross streets waited files of motor-cars. Small snowflakes dallied
and gambolled with one another in the dark air, reluctant to reach the
ground. Gracie's hat began to whiten. At Piccadilly Circus Evelyn led
Gracie down steps into the vast warm roundness of the populous
Underground station, and then led her up steps again into bleak Lower
Regent Street.
"It's raining," said Evelyn.
"Let it," said Gracie, cautiously unwilling this time to contradict him.
"It's magnificent." She quickened her pace. "Think of a hot bath."
Then silence. Evelyn agreed with Gracie that to walk in the blusterous
weather was indeed magnificent; in the wind and the rain driven against
his face by the wind he experienced sensations of triumphant vitality
such as perhaps he had not had for years; but he said nothing, and his
silence was grim. He felt cruel towards Gracie, striding along, her
leather coat now and then grazing his thick winter tweed. Well, she
could indeed stride along--even in her silly fragile high heels, which
no doubt she would never wear again after this soaking. At last he could
tolerate the silence no more.
"You were disappointed at our Mr. Jebson not being on view, weren't
you?" He was openly sardonic.
"I think I was," Gracie answered with acquiescent candour.
"You've remembered him ever since Smithfield, haven't you?"
"I certainly have." Some resistance in her tone.
"Just tell me. What was there in him that was so interesting to you? I
must say I didn't find him terribly interesting. Just a well-set-up sort
of a--brute." Evelyn chose the last word to annoy her; he who never
quarrelled, who maintained always that social friction was unanswerable
proof that somebody had been clumsy--he was aware of a desire to force
her into an ugly and perhaps violent altercation. Not because she
ordered him about and imposed her caprices upon him. Nor because she had
called him 'darling' at the counter and all Smithfield would soon know
that she had called him 'darling.' But solely because she had actively
shown interest in the young butcher: phenomenon of sentiment which
seriously offended him--while he sneered at it. She, beautiful, elegant,
intelligent, intellectual, civilised, a masterpiece of an age of
decadence--she to keep fondly in her mind for many weeks the image of a
tall, powerful, coarsely handsome, self-complacent dandy of a tradesman
whom she had seen for not more than a couple of minutes! And so brazen
about her interest too!
She said calmly:
"Well-set-up 'brutes' aren't so terrifically plentiful, you know. And a
brute is so soothing to the nerves. And this particular brute is a
worker. He's getting something done, like we are. I loved his Express
Counter. I could see his individuality all over it. Wholesome. And him
getting up at 3 a.m. to go to Smithfield, and then looking after his
lovely Express Counter last thing at night. She was funny, that starchy,
wrinkled creature behind the counter! It makes me smile, how jealous all
men are. Anyhow, I've never met one that wasn't."
Devilish girl! With that single word 'jealous' she had rendered a
quarrel impossible. He had his dignity to take care of. He acted a
pleasant, easy laugh.
"I was only asking," he said, acting gentleness.
"And I was only answering," she said, very amiably.
And she turned her head and looked up at him through the rain with a
charming glance that he felt rather than clearly saw in the murk. Danger
was past, resentment dissipated. He was happy; his spirit was lifted;
and for no logical reason.
"Oh!" she cried, pointing. "That's marvellous, especially on a night
like this. I do admire you for that. You're a poet." She pointed.
They had come out on the top of the Duke of York's Steps, into the full
force of the south-west rain-bearing wind. Not a soul on the Steps.
Automobiles flitting in both directions along the Mall below them. Lamps
on both sides of the Mall obscured at moments by the swishing branches
of trees. Beyond, the dark forest of St. James's Park, with a gleam of
the lake. And beyond the forest, high in the invisible firmament, the
flood-lit tower of the Imperial Palace poking itself brilliantly up to
the skies. There was nothing in all London, then, but that commanding
great column of white light.
The emotional accents of Gracie's rich voice moved Evelyn. If she was
thrilled by the tower, he was thrilled by her thrill as well as by the
tower. The rain on their cheeks came straight from heaven.
As, after skirting St. James's Park, they reached Birdcage Walk,
Evelyn's damnable habit of foresight asserted itself. He foresaw that,
all dripping wet as they were, they could not stop talking in the hall
of the Palace. It would be too absurd, and too conspicuous. Therefore
everything that had to be said must be said before entering the hotel.
"You're really leaving to-morrow morning?"
"Yes."
"There'll be some rough going in the Channel."
"Oh no! It must have been blowing up for this when we came over. It will
blow itself out to-night. Besides, who cares?"
"I may possibly be down to see you off," he said. "What time?"
"_Please_ don't!" she said firmly. "I loathe being seen off. Monsieur
Adolphe seeing me off is just as much as I can do with."
"I understand. I should be the same myself," Evelyn concurred.
Within the next few days he too would be going to Paris; but she did not
know this, and he did not tell her. To meet her in Paris might,
assuredly would, complicate his existence, and he could not tolerate
that. The Hôtel de la Concorde, not young tyrannic women, was his
business in Paris.
With what a sense of triumph, of tingling warm health, they entered the
great, still, mirrored hall. Long Sam glanced at them.
"Wet, sir," said he. But he was too discreet to show any curiosity as to
their reason for arriving on foot and not in a taxi, on a night so wild.
Crossing the hall they left a trail of drops of water behind them. And
in the lift they made little pools. As the lift climbed up towards
Third, the liftman looked enquiringly at Evelyn, who nodded. The lift
stopped.
"Well, au revoir," said Evelyn. "You mentioned a hot bath."
He smiled. She smiled. They stood together for a moment at the
lift-door. They were parting. He did not know her address at St. Cloud.
He might not see her again for months, years, if ever. It was not he
himself, but some volition not his, that said:
"I should rather like to hear how Tessa goes on. You might send me a
line."
She nodded, suddenly pulling off her hat, which was sodden; so was much
of her hair. She had quite the air of a child, then--delicious. They
shook hands. She walked off to her rooms. Evelyn re-entered the lift to
go up to Seventh and a hot bath.
"Well, I'm damned!" he breathed. He felt relief.
CHAPTER LI
AFTER THE STORM
I
A few days later, on the special "Golden Arrow" steamer, Evelyn
experienced a surprise and a thrill. The New Year gale had nearly but
not quite blown itself out, and after an average comfortable voyage the
ship was nosing cautiously through the narrows of Calais port, past
flags and marine signals and quidnuncs and amateur fishermen whose
skirts were lifted at times by a gusty breeze. Although the boat was not
crowded, a large group of travellers had packed themselves tightly round
the spot where the gangway was to be, apparently lest the boat might
start back for Dover with themselves still on board.
Evelyn sat reading in a sheltered deck-chair. He had a fine sense of
freedom. He was alone. He had nobody to look after, because he had
nobody to look after him. For Oldham had been left behind. Oldham and
the Continent were mutually antipathetic. Oldham feared the sea and
despised foreign tongues, and so far as he was concerned the recent tour
in France and Italy had not been wholly successful. A holiday being
overdue to him, he was exiled for a week or more to Berkshire and the
society of his wife. The good-bye to Evelyn at Victoria had been wistful
rather than buoyant. As for Evelyn, it seemed to him, in those moments
which Oldham's presence would have rendered so anxious with a hundred
cares, that he had not a care in the world. His debarkation was already
organised; and for passengers by the "Golden Arrow" service the Calais
custom-house did not exist. When he felt the very faint bump which
indicated that the vessel was alongside the quay, he rose slowly,
surveyed his three suit-cases ranged together on the deck, dropped the
pocket 'Eothen' into his pocket, and surveyed superiorly, with a
deplorable spiritual pride, the mass of his fellow-sinners who from mere
stupidity were inconveniencing themselves for no reason whatever.
Having duly confided his baggage to an instructed porter, he strolled to
the rail, aft, and from there watched the foolish urgency of travellers
down the sloping gangway to the quay.
He said to himself, boyish:
"I have my seat in the train, like all the rest of us; there are no
customs; the ship is on time; I will be the last passenger to leave this
ship." Yes, he felt boyish.
Had it not been for this infantile resolution, he might have missed the
surprise and the thrill. The stream of descending passengers had
thinned; the hand of the official at the bottom of the gangway was full
of landing tickets; and Evelyn was on the point of leaving the rail when
the surprise and the thrill happened to him. He saw Gracie on the
gangway. Her face was half-turned towards the ship, and she held by the
hand big Tessa Tye, leading her with every precaution down the steep
slope. The two of them safe at length on the quay, Gracie took Tessa's
arm, solicitously, even tenderly, and the slim girl and the spreading,
ungainly expectant mother walked slowly towards the train, whose engine
was sending up a thin wisp of steam in the far distance. He was
thrilled. The expression of watchful motherliness on the face of the
girl, the expression of trust on the pinched pale face of the expectant
mother, offered a contrast and a harmony which made the most touching
sight that Evelyn had ever seen. "That girl is magnificent," he said to
himself, and not for the first time. He knew that he had witnessed
something unforgettable. Withal, he had lost the sense of freedom.
He had sworn to be the last passenger to leave the ship, and he was. His
seat chanced to be in the nearest coach of the train. The young women
were not in that coach. He superintended the stowing of his baggage,
tipped the porter, and then, scarcely witting, jumped down to the
platform and walked along the endless train, glancing at every window.
He reached the last coach, the coach at the head of the train. There was
Gracie at the end of the last passenger coach, talking to an attendant,
who by much physical force was closing a case for her.
"Good afternoon," Evelyn called.
She turned, standing high above him in the doorway.
"Well, well! How nice!" she smiled.
"Can I do anything?"
"Not a thing. Thanks frightfully!" She laughed easily.
"Everything's all right?"
"Perfect. We waited four days at the Lord Warden for the weather. _I_
shouldn't have waited. But Tessa was really a bit alarmed at the look of
the sea. Dover's a very interesting place. I'd no idea!... And you?"
"Hotel business in Paris. Your esteemed father's business. You staying
in Paris to-night?"
"Oh no! Straight on to St. Cloud. I wouldn't have to begin all over
again to-morrow for anything on earth. I suppose you'll honour the
Concorde?"
"No. The Montaigne. And if it isn't one of the two best hotels in Paris
it soon will be." They both smiled.
Officials on the platform were becoming restless, and the windy air was
very bleak.
"I'd better be getting back to my seat," said Evelyn. "Au revoir."
II
Gracie leaned her head out of the doorway, smiled again, waved a hand as
he hurried away. Enchanting spectacle: young, beautiful, graceful,
distinguished, mother to a mother! Enchanting! Faultless! In the warmth
of his corner at the other end of the train, a table all to himself, he
disposed his chilled limbs and his minor belongings for the journey. Not
a word had been said about meeting again. Every passenger on the "Golden
Arrow" is served with lunch where he sits. Evelyn did not move. He might
have stumbled through the length of the shaking train to pay a visit to
Gracie en route, but he refrained, because of the intimidating prospect
of having to talk to the expectant mother as well as to Gracie. He read
little; he did not doze. He did not think. He just existed in a haze of
vague meditation. Coffee. Cigar. Dusk. Darkness. Bill-paying. The
industrial lamps and flares of Creil. Swift-sliding twinkles of squalid
suburban stations. Weariness. A tunnel. Gare du Nord. He looked at his
watch. The train was punctual. Confusion on the echoing platform of the
Gare du Nord. Everyone for himself. _Sauve qui peut._ Hostile and greedy
glances of porters.
Evelyn had one glimpse of a known face: that of one of the Cheddar
brothers. Tall, physically as splendid an animal as Charlie Jebson, and
with features more refined; indeed aristocratic. Sort of Renaissance
prince. Evelyn envied him, and despised himself for envying him. Of
course he was at the station to meet Gracie, to take charge of her. Of
course she had telegraphed to him. In the jostling crowd a uniformed
man, with "Montaigne" gilded on his forehead, discovered Evelyn, and
Evelyn yielded himself up like a parcel to the ceremonious care of the
uniform. As he trudged along the stone-cold platform, miles of it, he
looked out for Gracie. She had gone, vanished into France.
CHAPTER LII
TELEPHONE
I
Two afternoons later Evelyn was scrutinising sheets of figures in the
private office of Monsieur Laugier, _directeur_ of the Hôtel de la
Concorde, Place de la Concorde. Although his chief business was the
Concorde, he had chosen to stay at the Montaigne, partly because in
London he had quite sufficient of the disadvantages of sleeping where he
worked, and partly because on his previous visit to Paris he had stayed
at the Concorde, and he now wished to get the general atmosphere night
and morning of the Montaigne.
The directorial apartment was on the mezzanine floor of the courtyard of
the magnificent old building which only thirty-five years earlier had
begun its rise from the status of a lovely but chilly palace or ministry
to that of a luxury hotel with steam-heating, lifts, electric bells, and
baths numerous enough to lave the limbs of the General Staff of a whole
army.
The luxury, however, had not extended itself to the directorial room,
which was small, low-ceilinged, lighted by two bulbs only, and warmed by
an anthracite stove of excessive power. The narrow window was shut tight
and curtained. The sole ventilation was obtained by means of a draught
under the heavy, gilded door. The temperature was torrid. In strange
contrast with the antique, sombre, soiled, ornately panelled walls, the
elaborate cornice, and the curious parquet of blackened oak, was an
assemblage of office furniture of the very newest style; last
mechanical, practical ingenuity of Chicago gadgets refashioned in the
last chic of Parisian design, wilfully audacious in shape, insolently
flouting every tradition, rioting in the unexpected, steely, glassy,
flimsy. M. Laugier's desk was as large as Evelyn's in Birdcage Walk, and
far more glittering; it had apparently about a thousand drawers, and one
turn of a handle, as M. Laugier had shown to Evelyn, would
simultaneously lock every drawer. The slope of the easy-chairs could be
modified without sound or effort, to suit the idiosyncrasy of any
sitter. The cabinets had the intricacy of Chinese puzzles. The files
would snap and cling to documents with the ferocity of tigers.
And in the midst, at the end of the desk, sat Henri Laugier, fat as an
operatic soprano, with the abdomen of a self-contemplating Buddha,
dressed, in black, as loosely as the ease-loving landlord of a country
inn; black hair, seamed slack face, intensely black eyes, long black
moustache, black beardlet, low collar, flowing black tie, podgy hands
and short fingers stained by the nicotine of countless cigarettes; the
latest of the cigarettes drooped precarious from a corner of the
directorial pallid lips. Laugier had the reputation of being a unique
'figure' in the continental hotel-world; and perhaps he presumed upon
his reputation, part of which resided in the pliocene, immortal black
straw hat, which he wore day and evening, summer and winter; this straw
hat now lay on a chair exclusively allotted to it as a chair is allotted
to a privileged cat. M. Laugier came from Carcassonne, and was proud of
his origin. His eyes were said to be absolutely fatal to women, even at
long range, and none who had fallen to him ever forgot him. A stout old
lady still at intervals arrived with a grandchild or so to see him at
the hour of the apéritif; her boast, not clearly established, was that
she had been his first mistress.
Evelyn and M. Laugier conversed now in French now in English as they
pored over the serried columns whose nines were like fives, fives like
nines, and sevens like nothing in the history of British arithmetic.
Evelyn thought: "Is this man really my subordinate, and am I really
supposed to be in control of all his slippery and enigmatic
foreignness?" M. Laugier certainly treated him as a superior, but with
an exquisite, soft forbearance such as he might have used to a noble and
powerful savage. The Orcham Merger seemed a less simple enterprise here
than when it was under discussion with Sir Henry Savott at the Imperial
Palace.
II
The telephone faintly rang. M. Laugier clasped the oddly shaped French
instrument in his lazy, caressing fingers.
"_Allo! Allo!_" He listened with an intent yet dreamy smile. "It is for
you, _mon cher directeur_," he said, and pushed the instrument across
the corner of the desk towards Evelyn, who said to himself:
"It's that girl!"
"_Allo! Allo!_" Evelyn addressed the transmitter. "Excuse me, _mon cher
directeur_," he apologised to M. Laugier.
"I beg you, please," said M. Laugier, spreading his arms in deprecation
of Evelyn's apology.
"Mr. Orcham?" the voice from the telephone enquired.
It was that girl.
"Yes," he replied, with primness--for he had no intention of allowing
Laugier to suspect from either tone or phrase that it was a woman who
had rung him up.
"I've had a deuce of time getting you. You told me you would be staying
at the Montaigne."
"That is quite correct," said Evelyn.
"But you're at the Concorde."
"Yes. And very busy," said Evelyn.
"Shall you be busy to-night?"
"Yes, I shall," said Evelyn.
"How late?"
"Afraid I can't say."
"Couldn't you get out of it?"
"I could not," said Evelyn with careful coldness, more than ever
determined that M. Laugier should gather nothing as to the nature of the
conversation from the side of it to which he was listening. Conceive the
old man (not that he was really old) aware that his grave but younger
superior, in the midst of a highly technical interview, was arguing with
a young woman about a proposed rendezvous! The notion horrified sedate
Evelyn.
"Couldn't you manage to be free by ten o'clock?"
"Sorry. Impossible," said Evelyn with dignity.
"Then ten-thirty."
"I might try," said Evelyn calmly, after a pause.
"Why are you so cross with me?"
"I'm not at all cross," said Evelyn.
"You're very stiff."
"Where are you?" he asked in a new tone, apparently ignoring the
criticism.
"In a call-box."
"Well, you see, I'm not. Do you understand?" said Evelyn grimly, and he
heard Gracie's quick, rich laugh of comprehension.
"You mean you aren't alone?"
"Yes," said Evelyn.
"Well now, what about to-night? Ten-thirty? I must see you. It's rather
urgent. I had to come in to Paris to-day, and I must go back to St.
Cloud some time to-night, but it doesn't matter much what time. Where
can we meet?"
She had throughout been assuming his readiness to meet her provided only
the hour could be arranged. The impudent assumption both amazed and
pleased him. She looked like being a serious nuisance. But her voice in
the telephone was so attractive, even seductive, alluring. And she knew
it was, curse her! She was using it unscrupulously. (He enjoyed thinking
this against her.) Then he remembered her expression, her gestures, her
walk, as she had convoyed Tessa up the platform of the marine station at
Calais on the previous day. She was a magnificent girl, and often had he
privately admitted her grand quality. He felt proud as he listened to
her cajoling, wonderful voice. She--she so _chic_, intelligent,
magnificent--was running after him! Oh yes! He fancied himself!...
Coxcomb! And worse names than coxcomb did he apply to himself. But there
it was. She was running after him! "It's rather urgent." What was rather
urgent? An excuse. She was running after him. Rather marvellous, say
what you choose!
"Well," she questioned again, impatient. "Where?"
"The Montaigne," he suggested.
"Oh no! That won't do. I loathe your Montaigne. It's just something
chipped off Park Avenue. Listen! You know the rue Scribe?"
"I do," he answered impassively.
"I'll be there in a car, on the Opera side."
"Very well," he agreed.
"Ten-thirty, mind!"
"Yes. Good-bye."
"Who's with you?" She was adding the feminine postscript. Impertinent
enquiry!
"The director," said Evelyn, more coldly. He would not utter Laugier's
name in Laugier's presence.
"Of the Concorde?"
"Precisely."
"Oh! Laugier. Isn't he a dear? Give him my love."
"I will. Good-bye!" He replaced the telephone in front of M. Laugier.
Assignation with a woman hidden in a car in the rue Scribe, Opera side.
It was a bit astounding, after all! A bit romantic! The impulse to vaunt
came over him, irresistible. Laugier should be made to appreciate with
what tranquil severity he, Evelyn, could talk to a beautiful, wealthy
and headstrong young girl.
"She sends you her love," he said, with a casual smile. "Miss----"
"Mademoiselle Gracie?" Laugier interrupted eagerly.
Evelyn nodded, taken aback and forlorn.
"I imagined to myself that it was her voice when she spoke first." M.
Laugier gazed meditatively at the glassy desk. "Ah! _La belle créature!
La belle créature!_" It was as if he saw her mirrored in the desk-top.
Then he gazed at Evelyn long, a thousand flattering, mischievous
implications in his death-dealing dark eyes which no illness and no slow
convalescence could quench.
"_Eh bien, mon cher directeur_," said Evelyn, fingering a sheet of
paper.
"_Eh bien, mon cher directeur_," said Laugier. "_Revenons à nos
moutons._" A wisp of a glistening, black lock had fallen over the pale
forehead.
In the airless soporific warmth of the little room Evelyn the man of
business inexorably resumed his investigation.
CHAPTER LIII
ELECTRONS
I
When Evelyn reached the rue Scribe at one minute before half-past ten,
having left too early a very friendly dinner with the manager of the
Hôtel Montaigne, there was no car waiting on the Opera side of the broad
rue Scribe, and comparatively little traffic to confuse a watcher for a
car containing a particular person. No stream of vehicles. No policeman.
Cars passed at intervals of a few seconds. In the near distance
motor-buses rumbled and great trams screeched and rattled over points.
The huge edifice of the Opera, dwarfing all the houses, piled itself up
into the velvet starlit sky; a few windows gleamed yellow in the hinder
parts of the building. Evelyn stood waiting opposite the entrance to one
of the courtyards, in or out of which walked occasionally some vague
human being on some mysterious errand. An operatic performance was going
forward somewhere in the complex immensity of the Opera; but it was
hidden, soundless, immeasurably far off, like a secret and esoteric
ceremonial, attended by adepts and withdrawn from the profane city into
another world. Evelyn was alone. He felt alone. Waiting for a woman in a
foreign capital! He thought: "Is this dignified? Something furtive and
illicit about it." What could it mean? What did it presage? Still, it
was certainly romantic, at his age--and hers. _La belle créature_,
Laugier had called her, with enthusiasm. What did that signify in the
mouth of a Laugier? One adjective only could be applied to the _belle
créature_, and Evelyn had several times applied it; incalculable. He
anticipated her arrival with the excited interest of a reader awaiting
the next instalment of a sensational serial.
But she did not arrive. One minute after the half-hour. Two minutes.
Three minutes. And every second of them had been a minute. The man of
passionate punctuality glanced at a dim clock affixed to a lamp-post. He
unbuttoned his long overcoat to glance at his watch in the gloom. He
walked nearer to the lamp-post and glanced again. He was cold, and
rebuttoned his overcoat. Was he in the right street? He crossed the
street to examine the street-sign, though he had already examined it
once. Then he recrossed, quickly, lest the car might come while he was
absent from the arranged side. He grew more and more nervous. He was
humiliated. Twenty-five minutes to eleven. She was capable of being half
an hour late. 'They' did it on purpose: at least such was the masculine
theory, and there was a lot in it. At that moment, in Paris itself,
hundreds of men might be waiting, waiting, and saying to themselves
bitterly: "She is doing it on purpose."
A car slackened speed, swerving towards the pavement. No. It could not
be hers. It stopped, with the saloon-door exactly opposite to him:
pretty feat of brake-manipulation. He saw a figure in the dark interior
of the saloon. No resemblance to Gracie. Then a light was switched on
within, and Gracie sat suddenly revealed to him, radiant, opulent in a
low evening frock which a loosened, effulgent cloak hardly concealed.
'They' were insensitive to cold, especially on a cold night.
The chauffeur had descended and was holding the saloon-door open for
him.
"I'm frightfully punctual," said Gracie, leaning forward.
Her lovely face was serious, unsmiling.
"You are indeed," said Evelyn, raising his gibus.
"Do get in."
He got in, crushing his hat against the top of the door. Nervousness.
The chauffeur shut the door, and then stationed himself attendant with
his back to the car. Evelyn subsided into soft cushions, straightened
his hat; he could detect her perfume, feel the richness of the stuff of
her cloak on his hand. Out went the light. The next instalment of the
sensational serial had apparently started. But not with words. Gracie
said nothing, and Evelyn could think of nothing to say, so constrained
was he--and no doubt she too. The interior of the car was the most
private, most secure room in all Paris.
"And now?" said he at length. After all he was a man, and the older, and
for the sake of his own opinion of himself he must assume an air of
taking charge of the situation.
"Well, darling," said Gracie. "You haven't shaken hands." He groped for
her hand and held it, without squeezing it. "It's much too early to do
anything yet. What about going into the Opera for an hour? They're doing
'Le Chevalier à la Rose.'"
"So I noticed," said Evelyn. "But we shall never be able to get seats,
at this time of night, shall we?"
"Don't let that trouble you," she replied. "You leave it to me, and
you'll see."
"I should love it," he said, insincerely but rather convincingly.
"It's the best of all the modern operas," she said. "Of course you've
seen it."
"Yes. I saw it in Naples. The boy chevalier, what's-his-name, was played
by an aged dame with bow-legs. It finished at two in the morning."
Laughing nervously, Gracie leaned across Evelyn and knocked at the
window.
"Front of the Opera," she instructed the chauffeur, in French.
Fifteen seconds, and Evelyn was handing her out of the car. She gave a
brief order to the chauffeur. She was carrying a book as well as her
bag. They climbed the steps of the façade and through gilded gates
entered the vast marmoreal and gilded vestibule. At the Control, she
drew a ticket from her bag and presented it. She had bought a box in
advance.
"You've won," said Evelyn.
She lowered the corners of her mouth and half closed her eyes as she
laughed in mild, sardonic enjoyment of her trick on him. Constraint was
suddenly gone, intimacy established, the old intimacy of Smithfield.
At sight of the ticket, and of Gracie's frock and cloak, functionaries
on the cyclopean marble and onyx staircase of honour took on the
demeanour of chamberlains of Louis Quatorze, and the pair were wafted
onward from smile to servile smile. Furlongs of unyielding marble to
walk! An old, cringing, importunate woman, with hair ribboned like a
young girl's, introduced them into the box, and her harpy-fingers closed
rapaciously and ungratefully on a ten-franc note from Evelyn.
The box was like a drawing-room of the seventies, not refurbished nor
cleaned since the seventies. The folds of its brocaded curtains seemed
to be stiff with the dust of Napoleon III. Loud, elaborate, concealed
music was heard, but the drawing-room had apparently no connection with
any phenomena external to it. It was sufficient to itself. Glimpse of a
fraction of a distant stage with small, moving, singing figures.
II
The pair strolled indifferently across the drawing-room, at the end of
which a gilt and velveted parapet protected the unwary from the risk of
falling into the stalls. They sat down in ornate armchairs of gold and
white. In front of them, below them and around them was the auditorium,
with a side view of the stage; and deep down a den of crowded musicians
fiddling and blowing away for life under an excited and ardent
conductor. After the spendthrift spaciousness of the approach the
auditorium appeared small and inconsiderable. But it was built of solid
gold, and its tiers were supported by golden Herculean naked women,
carved in the fearful symmetry of Titan's daughters, with breasts that
might have nonchalantly suckled monsters of insatiable voracity; scores
of these ageless brazen nymphs, smiling fixedly as they had smiled for
half a century and more.
And everywhere, amid the stupendous gold sculptures and ornamentations,
covering the floor, crowding the tiers to the topmost, sat midgets: the
audience, inelegant, shabby, sombre, assisting at the secret and
esoteric ceremonial hidden within the heart of the huge encircling
opera-house. And of the ceremonial the stage-spectacle was scarcely the
most important part. Those of the midgets who watched it did so with
indifference. Which indifference was repeated on the stage by the
performers whom custom had withered and use staled. Only when some
disaster threatened did one or other of them glance in momentary anxiety
at the conductor for help. The affair was less an opera than part of a
rite.
And by no means all the audience of midgets watched the stage-spectacle.
For a time Gracie's box and its two inhabitants divided with the stage
the popular interest. It was one of the two best boxes, and perhaps
Gracie was the smartest woman in the theatre; but in no metropolitan
theatre which had not sunk to the level of a tourist-resort would the
box have been a cynosure.
"Why are we here?" thought Evelyn, fascinated by the slatternliness of
the stalls, where there were men in morning dress and women in
three-piece raiment.
Gracie put her head closer to his.
"This and Napoleon's tomb and the Folies-Bergère and the Louvre are the
sights of Paris," she murmured.
Evelyn smiled vaguely, thinking: "Is she a mind-reader?" He murmured in
response: "That's what makes the thing interesting. But is that why you
came here?"
"Don't you love being a tourist sometimes?" she said. "I get so tired of
being superior I simply must have a change. Sometimes I feel like going
into a shop in the rue de Rivoli and buying a Baedeker just to carry
about with me. Don't you understand what I mean?"
"Certainly," said Evelyn. "But then I never do feel superior."
"No. I believe you never do," she agreed, as if suddenly impressed by a
hitherto unnoticed truth.
"Except now, in this box," he added mischievously.
"You _are_ in a mood to-day," she said with strange meekness.
"Isn't that one of the Cheddars down there? Fourth row? Near the
middle?" Evelyn asked, having perceived a very stylish young man
islanded among the slatternliness.
"Where? Oh yes. I see," she calmly answered. "Yes it is. That's Leo. I
wonder what he's doing here?"
"He's taking a rest from being superior," said Evelyn. "Look at the
Baedeker on his knee."
"Not a----" Gracie checked herself. "You're teasing me!" she protested
cheerfully. Then she gave attention to the stage, and Evelyn also.
He was at last beginning to surrender himself to the make-believe of the
story when something happened. The curtain slowly hid the stage. The
musicians ceased to play. The conductor laid down his bâton. A
mechanical, rhythmic, professional applause sounded from two separate
parts of the auditorium, persistent and formal: an incident of the great
rite. The curtain rose again. The beat of the applause was now
irregular. A few persons in the stalls were clapping. The curtain fell a
second time. Then a row of the principal singers appeared in front of
the curtain, with the conductor, who had been magically transported from
the orchestra, in the midst of them. They held hands like children,
bowing, smirking, smiling, with formal, insincere gestures. The applause
grew to be more general, but even now the large majority of the audience
was not clapping. The artists disappeared in a seeming ecstasy of
gratitude for favour received. Hundreds of lamps glowed together,
changing twilight into dazzling day. Silence. The next moment the
auditorium was half empty. Tedium, futility, disillusion descended in an
invisible vapour upon the scene.
"Why are we here?" Evelyn demanded again, in the terrible secrecy of his
heart. But, such was the ennui distilled from the vapour, he might well
have propounded questions still more desolating: Why are we any where?
Why is anything? Is there after all a key to the preposterous enigma of
the universe? But Gracie was smiling happily, meditative, as if to
herself, as if she possessed the key in her soul. Evelyn thought: "How
robust, how coarse, is a woman's taste in pleasure!"
A tap on the door of the box, so discreet, so dubious. The door opened
with caution, and the ribboned harpy was seen furtively accepting money.
Leo Cheddar entered. Gracie rose and went to meet him. Evelyn stood. He
picked up the programme which lay on the broad upholstered rail of the
parapet. Under the programme had been hidden Gracie's book. He looked
down at it curiously. It was called, "The Nature of the Physical World."
He had read it in his castle at home and had found it very disturbing,
awakening, exciting. If the universe held an enigma, surely she was the
enigma.
"Evelyn!" She was softly calling him to the other end of the box.
He turned to join the other two, and was introduced. The tall, slim,
beautifully clad, aristocratic young man overtopped Evelyn by six or
seven inches. His voice was deep and agreeable, his deportment
faultlessly urbane.
"We were wondering why _you_ are in this galley," said Gracie,
mockingly.
"But you know wherever I am I never miss a performance of the
'Rosenkavalier' if I can possibly help. I'm hearing it here for the
first time."
"And what do you think of it?" Evelyn asked.
"The performance? The worst I have ever seen. Ignoble in every detail,
except the oboe playing." He smiled sadly. "But the opera. The most
enchanting thing since 'Figaro.'"
"'Enchanting,'" said Gracie. "That is always Leo's adjective for the
'Rosenkavalier.'" Mockery again in her tone and glance.
"Give me a better one, and I'll never use 'enchanting' any more," said
Cheddar evenly.
"Well," Gracie went on. "I've always told you there's a bit too much
slapstick in this opera for my refined taste." She was still quizzing
him.
"I prefer to call it realism," said Cheddar amiably. "One must remember
the period it portrays."
"Period--portrays. What an artist in alliteration he is!" She looked at
Evelyn. "'Portrays.' Noble word."
"It's in the dictionary," said Cheddar. "I don't believe in letting
noble words rust there. I take them out----"
"And give them a rub up."
"Yes," said Cheddar.
His politeness was impeccable. But Evelyn thought: "They've got across
one another.... Am I the cause?" His sympathy was with the man. Why
did women rejoice in setting up discomfort, men never? He said aloud, to
ease the discomfort:
"I heard it at Naples last. In fact, the only time I have heard it."
"Ah!" murmured Cheddar. "The San Carlo. That must have been wormwood."
He passed his hand over a pained forehead.
"Gall," said Evelyn shortly, and grinned.
"Now take what you call the 'slapstick' in the last act." Cheddar
returned to the defence of himself against Gracie.
He talked earnestly and ingeniously about the last act and its
'slapstick' stuff. The reputation of the 'Rosenkavalier' was evidently
to him a matter of some moment. Though he lived a lite of unmitigated
self-indulgence, though in every detail of material existence he
demanded and accepted as of right the services of others, though he
toiled not nor span, though he had never known what it was to be
overdrawn at the bank, though he spent his life in savouring his own
reactions to works of art, in all the arts--including the culinary and
the sartorial--he was a serious youth; and admitting that he neither
wrote nor painted nor composed music, his manners at any rate were an
example to the world of the perfection which sustained honest effort
might reach in one of the applied arts.
Evelyn liked and admired him, and supported him against the naughty
malice of Gracie, and regretted that she did not invite him to stay in
the box for the remainder of the performance. When the musicians crept
back with lowered heads into their cave, the two men shook hands
sympathetically. Evelyn never saw Leo Cheddar again, for the serious
youth did not even reappear in his stall.
III
"Shall we sit more back for this act? In this place it's better to hear
than to see," Gracie suggested when she and Evelyn were alone again. All
mischief had suddenly gone out of her changing, shot-silk voice, and her
face had an expression of angelic sweetness. (Not a syllable about Leo
Cheddar.) Evelyn agreed. They sat down. There were chairs enough in the
box to accommodate a Board of Directors. A very long time seemed to pass
before the lights of the auditorium were lowered. While they were
waiting Evelyn said: "I see you've got 'The Nature of the Physical
World' with you."
"You've read it?"
"Oh yes."
"Don't you think it's perfectly thrilling?"
"I do," said Evelyn, with emphasis, responding to the vibrations of her
tone.
"Only," she went on. "These scientists don't really understand, or they
pretend not to. I wonder whether any of them have condescended to read
Troward."
"Troward?"
"There you are! Of course you've never heard of him! I'm quite used to
that. You ought to read his Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science. I
really mean you _ought_. They're more exciting than Eddington's book
there."
"And what's Troward's line?" Evelyn asked, carefully serious to suit her
new mood.
"God's his line," she answered, with a sort of fierceness. "The divine
creative mind. That's his line. If the divine creative mind is infinite,
we are _it_. You and me, and all those people there. And these chairs
and the lights from the chandelier. Everything. No getting away from it.
You know the electrons, whirling around. Of course they aren't the
purest form of the divine mind, I mean the first original form. But some
finer kind of electrons are--that our electrons are made of. Must be.
And they're everywhere and they're all the same and all perfect and all
working together, doing evolution. God isn't imperfect. If you try hard
and keep on trying you realise them. I can realise them now and then for
half a minute. Then I can't, and then I have to begin and try again. But
that half minute!... No, it isn't as much as half a minute. Two
seconds, half a second. I tell you--well, I want you to read that book
of Troward's. You'll be glad afterwards. I know you will. And there's
something else----"
As she turned her eager, radiant face to look into his, the chandelier
extinguished itself, and her features became a vague oval to him in the
obscurity of the back of the box. The orchestra sounded warm, mellow,
benevolent. They listened, intent. Evelyn felt the nearness of her
presence, her frock, the bodily organism within the frock--she had cast
her brilliant cloak on one of the empty chairs. This was another
instalment of the serial, and it was indeed sensational. She stirred,
restless as usual. She rose.
"I think I must watch," she whispered, bending over him, and walked to
the front of the box and sat down there. Evelyn followed her.
The music had now asserted its importance over the importance of the
audience and even of the musicians. The auditorium, lit as before only
by the radiating brightness of the stage, was a blur of faces less
distinct than in the previous act. The music mounted swiftly to a
_forte_, fervid, imposing, exciting. The music was an enveloping
atmosphere, intoxicant. As it were involuntarily, Gracie's fingers for
an instant touched Evelyn's knee. He could feel her hand shaking. The
fine shock of momentary contact was electric.
"Perhaps _this_ is why we are here," he thought, intimidated, almost
fearful of mysterious forces unloosed.
Now the music sank to a _piano_. The glimpsed danger receded....
Later, much later, after an unmeasured passage of time, after a period
in which time was not and the senses were satisfied beyond any
anticipation of the future or memory of the past, existing content and
entranced in the present as the music unrolled itself bar by bar of the
score--three singers conspired to sing together in concert. Gracie sat
moveless, upright in her chair, gazing rightwards at the stage. Evelyn,
on her left, leaned his left elbow on Gracie's book on the rail of the
parapet, his left hand upholding his chin, and he too gazed, across her
bosom, rightwards at the stage. With her left hand Gracie touched his
shoulder warningly as if to still him into a more rapt attention to the
music. Slapstick, horse-play, farce there had been in the antic movement
of the comedy, but it was finished, and it had never distracted him from
the music, through which exquisite fragments of Viennese waltzes had
tantalisingly flitted.
Now the mood was serious, lovely, sublime. Beauty was born from beauty.
Impossible that the next beauty could exceed the last; but it did. The
interwoven voices of the singers wavered in patterns above the mighty
changing sea of instrumental harmony ascending from the pit, flames
curling and uncurling over a white glow of fire. Sound louder, sound
softer, in a steady, solemn rhythm. Ravishment of the soul through the
delicate receiving ear. Evelyn did not look at Gracie. The ray of his
glance passed by her straight to the three figures on the stage, the
conductor's tyrannic stick, the swaying mass of scraping and blowing
humanity down in the pit. But he was exactly aware of the expression on
her set face, and therefrom of the emotions in her heart. And he was
aware also of the two thousand blurred faces of the audience, distant
and nearer, high in the upper tiers, low on the floor of the stalls.
And the whole vast concourse of material flesh in infinite gradations
began to melt, to refine itself, to rarefy itself, into those spiritual
electrons of which Gracie had spoken, glistening, scintillating,
coruscating, as they whirled, immaterial at last, on their unfathomable
errands in pursuance of the divine supreme plan. Individuality ceased;
he was not he, Gracie was not she; nobody in the auditorium was anybody.
All were merged into a single impersonal, shining, shimmering integrity
of primal mind. Evolution had reversed, and at incredible speed swung
back through æons into the causal eternity before the Word moved upon
the waters and before even the waters were....
The trio ended. Time resumed. Material flesh was formed. Individualities
separated themselves. Evelyn was Evelyn again, and Gracie Gracie, and
the audience became tourists, bourgeois, concierges, husbands, wives,
mistresses, young girls.
The story of the comic opera went on its earthly way. Evelyn and Gracie
looked at each other. He saw that her beautiful face was very stern. She
rose, beckoning to him. He picked up the book and her bag, both of which
she was forgetting, and followed her out. She offered no explanation of
the sudden departure. Neither of them spoke. In the cold street, she
wrapped tight in her cloak and Evelyn in his long, thick overcoat,
Gracie went unhesitating to the left and up the rue Halèvy, ignoring
persistent touts. Scores of waiting cars and lounging chauffeurs. She
walked straight to her own car. The chauffeur saluted.
"Could I make that young man understand the last half-hour?" Evelyn
asked himself, glancing at the chauffeur. "No. Not if all our lives
depended on it. But according to her that cap of his isn't a cap. It's a
mass of whirling electrons."
They stepped into the car. The chauffeur, unaware of his own
composition, shut the door on them. Intimacy once more in the solitude
of the saloon. Gracie switched the light on.
"It was the only right moment to leave, wasn't it?" she said. "Thanks
awfully for not forgetting my things. Give me my bag, will you?" She
pulled a mirror from the bag and powdered her face. "I'm simply
frightfully hungry. Do you know the Caligula?"
"Not at all," said Evelyn.
"I'm told it's rather good. In the rue des Trois Frères, near the Place
Pigalle. Shall we go there?"
"Anywhere," said Evelyn dreamily.
The chauffeur, hired by the week with the grandiose car and all their
electrons, knew the Caligula. He manoeuvred his vehicle backwards and
forwards out of the line of cars. And soon they were shooting up the
curve of the rue Pigalle, with illuminated signs of night-cafés on
either side. They crossed the blazing, multi-coloured Place, and in a
dark wilderness of streets beyond they found the Caligula burning red,
all alone.
CHAPTER LIV
CALIGULA
I
"I've never been here before," said Gracie as they passed by a negro
dwarf-commissionaire out of the dark street into the strangely-lit
interior of the Caligula. "But I've heard a good deal about it from
French painters and Argentines and things, and----" The first glance at
the walls of the first room made her pause. "Well, yes. It's just about
what I expected it to be."
She looked at Evelyn and laughed. And Evelyn laughed a little, and said:
"I suppose everything ought to be seen."
The first room of the establishment was separated from the street door
by only three feet and a rattling curtain of strings of red beads. The
largest of three rooms in a suite that formed a vista, it seemed rather
small. It had a tiny bar with a very high counter, and next to the bar
an orchestra of three instruments: a fiddle, a sort of inlaid accordeon,
and a kettle-drum with cymbals. The music floated discreetly faint; the
drummer caressed his drum instead of hitting it, and the cymbals had a
muffled sound. Round the room were ranged tiny tables. In the middle, on
a space hardly bigger than the area of a dray, writhed a packed mass of
animals: human beings, dancing; they were closer to one another than
bees in a swarm, but they danced and appeared to delight in the jam and
in their asphyxiation. True, the heat of the room was tempered by an icy
draught from the street at each fresh arrival of visitors. The lighting
was a reddish amber, achieved by a number of pendant lamps each enclosed
in a very small globe of paper; it was as discreet as the music; it
disclosed, even if it did not fully reveal, the existence of the room
and the revellers.
The walls were frescoed with barbaric scenes--aphrodisiac, orgiastic,
murderous--from the short but merry life of the Roman emperor nicknamed
Caligula, the man-god who had dared everything in licence, and whose
audacity the painter had successfully emulated. The fact that in the
twilight of the room the frescoes had to be scanned with care in order
to be completely appreciated added much to their interest.
The second room was smaller than the first and the third smaller than
the second. The third was divided at the end into three alcoves, in each
a table. Evelyn demanded a table in the third room. A beautiful young
man raised his arms to signify that, although no table therein was as
yet occupied, all were reserved. Evelyn murmured that he was director of
the Hôtels de la Concorde and Montaigne. The young man bowed,
appreciative.
"In that case, monsieur, one will arrange oneself at once."
And he did, and personally accompanied his clients to the central
alcove, on whose sides were depicted with considerable ardour the loves
of Caligula and his sister Drusilla (named by name on her coiffure),
with a priest-horse and a massacre in the background.
Evelyn sat alone for a few minutes while Gracie was titivating in some
far retreat. Then the beautiful young manager reappeared. He had vaguely
heard of the Orcham Hotel-merger, though not by name. He talked to
Evelyn as to a confrère, and told him that ten of the chief
night-resorts in Montmartre, including the Caligula, were under one
powerful control, and that the Caligula was the fashionable baby of the
bunch. With pride he indicated that the wall-paintings were the true
origin of its vogue. He then departed and a head-waiter came up.
"As we are here," thought Evelyn, "we may as well _be_ here." And said
to the waiter:
"Champagne."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
He named the brand and the year.
"_Bien, monsieur._"
"Caviare."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
"With chopped onions."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
"Ham sandwiches."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
"Fresh fruit."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
"Pears, let us say."
"_Bien, monsieur._"
The waiter wrote and vanished.
When Gracie returned, Evelyn said:
"I've ordered."
She said, submissively:
"I'm so glad. I hate being asked what I want. Because I never know."
"I guessed what you would like," he said.
They regarded the scene.
"It's very amusing," said Gracie.
"Very," Evelyn agreed.
"You're in one of your distant moods," said Gracie.
Smiling sympathetically, he shook his head.
"Aren't you?"
"Not in the least," said Evelyn. "But I want you to know that I don't
live in a universe of superlatives."
"I like you for that," she said, looking up at him.
Never had she seemed so virginal to him, so ingenuous, so receptive, as
she did then. The innocence of her air ravished him. It was indeed a
heavenly phenomenon. He thought: "She lives alone. No one to protect her
with commonsense. Apparently she knows all manner of strange people;
some of them must have told her to come here, for instance. It's all
wrong. Her father ought to look after her better."
A man and two young women, all expensively smart, and French, walked up
the vista under escort of the beautiful manager, and took one of the
side alcoves. The young women had the melting, bold, fatigued eyes, the
glance, the swaying hips of debauchery; as shameless as monkeys, as
elegant as mannequins of a first-class couturière. When they had
disappeared into the alcove Gracie raised her eyebrows to Evelyn.
"Yes," he murmured. "It's a nice question whether they ought to be on
the floor or on the walls."
Gracie, however, ignored the sally. Already her mind had flitted away
from the two Cyprians.
"You don't know," she said gently, "what I was thinking while they were
singing that trio at the Opera." Her expression was very serious, and as
if imploring comprehension of what she was about to say.
"I think I do," Evelyn answered, his tone and expression suddenly
responding to hers. "You were thinking that everybody and everything in
the theatre was kind of dissolving into those elemental electrons of
yours. I can't explain quite, but it was somehow like that."
She turned pale. Beneath her powder and rouge he could see that she had
paled.
"How did you know?" she breathed, in a disconcerted whisper.
"I was feeling the same," he said.
"There you are!" breathed Gracie, solemn, deeply impressed, as if she
had just found the full explanation of a whole series of mysterious
phenomena and the confirmation of her secret ideas as to their origin.
She showed emotion, which communicated itself to Evelyn, who felt
apprehensive, even dismayed, though somehow agreeably.
But the materials of the repast arrived, and the topic was momentarily
suspended. Gracie drank three-quarters of a glass of champagne. Evelyn
watched new visitors, their demeanour, the service of the tables, the
writhing crowded mass of dancers in the distant first room. The discreet
lilt of the music and the low hum of talk mingled together in his ear.
Now and then a loud laugh, a thin shriek, disturbed the general rhythm.
He judged that the majority of the men were American, some of whom were
with their wives, others with Frenchwomen who probably had chosen the
Caligula for them. He noticed how the English visitors looked at the
storied walls as if surreptitiously, as if fearful of being caught in
the act of looking at them. And in a corner of his mind, meanwhile,
played fragmentary thoughts about the growing prevalence of mergers and
the rationalisation of dubious delights. Somewhere, in some office,
to-morrow, clerks would be checking the nightly returns of the ten
resorts of carousal, and adding them up, and preparing statistics for
the "Orcham" of the great pleasure-merger. Two waiters buzzed like flies
in front of the table, officious and fussily deferential. Evelyn guessed
that they must have been apprised of his important identity by the
beautiful young manager. When they had at last gone, Gracie said:
"Do you know, Evelyn--I want to tell you--I knew when I first met you
that morning we were bound to have the same ideas about things. I just
knew it. Did you?"
He gave the expected answer, sorry that he could not contrive to put a
more joyous conviction into his tone. His regret was due to the simple,
girlish earnestness of her glance and voice. He had misjudged her. She
was not really spoilt by sophistication. Her sensibilities had not been
dulled by experience. She had the fresh, ingenuous gusts of happy
emotion proper to a maiden. And she was so wise and serious too. Her
interests in life were noble.
"This is marvellous! She is marvellous!" he thought, suddenly uplifted.
"We are by ourselves here. Free! What a night! I've never been through
anything like it. It is marvellous!"
And he in turn had a gust of happy emotion. Was it not exquisitely
strange that in the opera-house they should have had the same illusion,
if illusion it could be called? Call it hallucination if you choose--no
matter! And was it not strange that, guessing half-playfully at first,
he should have divined that what had happened to him had happened to her
also? Of course the book had been the cause of it all, but the result
was none the less impressive. Easy to laugh--especially for an
Englishman! Nevertheless----
"And there's something else I want to tell you," Gracie went on,
earnestly, confidingly, after a mouthful of caviare: "I was frightfully
rude to you when you wouldn't come to my party that night at the Palace.
I simply couldn't bear you not coming. But all the same I liked you for
not coming. Yes, I did. I should have been disappointed if you had come.
And I didn't fly off the next morning because I was in a temper with
you--you thought that was the reason, didn't you?"
"I'm not so conceited," Evelyn smiled.
"Do let's be frank," she appealed. "I feel so near to you. You're always
drawing away from me. Remember our dance?... Now honestly, didn't
you think I'd left the Palace because I was vexed?"
"Yes," said Evelyn bravely, and felt as though he had snapped a chain
which was holding him.
"Well, that wasn't the reason. I went off because I was afraid of you...
I know it sounds very odd, but truly that was the reason." Gracie
continued without a pause: "I told you a lie the other day. I didn't
come to London on account of my book. I could have fixed that by post. I
came because I'd been thinking about you for weeks and weeks. I felt I
was missing you, and it was silly of me to go on missing you. I'm saying
all this because it's easier for a girl to talk than a man. People think
it isn't, but that's nonsense. I know how men feel--how you feel, I
mean. And I went away again because I was afraid of you again. It comes
over me. But to-night I'm not afraid of you. I'm very close to you. And
I need to be close to someone. I'm a beast. Yes. I am. You can guess
lots of things, but you'll never guess why I was so keen on going with
you to that Shaftesbury Express Counter of Mr. Jebson's. It was because
I wanted to see if I could make you jealous."
"Me! Jealous!"
"Oh! I know I didn't make you jealous, darling, though I said all men
were. I knew you weren't, without being told. But wasn't that walk to
the hotel in the rain heavenly? I got specially frightened of you on
that walk. I felt like nobody when I saw your lighted tower from the
Duke of York's Steps. You're so wonderful with your hotels. Father's
said so again and again. You know, daddy and I don't see much of each
other, but we're great friends, really. He always says you're wonderful.
I don't know _how_ you're so wonderful, but I can feel it. You make me
feel it. And I was walking with you in the rain, all wet, and I was
nothing. I knew I was nothing. If I hadn't known I was nothing I might
have stayed on at the Palace for a bit. So I just faded out. I know you
think I'm brilliant, and so I am in a way. But right down in me I'm
nothing. Why should I want to feel near you when I'm nothing?... Now
don't speak. Don't answer. I'm only telling you all this because I
should hate to deceive you any more. I'm not going to make any excuses
for myself.... 'Girls don't talk as I'm talking.' And all that. To
hell with girls! I'm not girls. I'm me. That's all. Pour me out some
more champagne, will you? A girl likes to be looked after. I suppose I
_am_ girls. But I'm me too. Wasn't that trio too lovely to bear?"
Evelyn said:
"You told me not to speak. But I shall speak if I like." He smiled. "And
I shall say what I like. You're miraculous. I say no more."
Instinct warned him to say no more. His eyes were speaking for him,
telling her his admiration, telling her that he was 'near' to her, and
that when he said 'miraculous' he meant it. He was convinced, then, that
there had never been a girl like this girl. She was wise in her
ingenuousness, in her direct simplicity. She understood. She had said,
"It's easier for a girl to talk than a man." And she was so honest: and
so humble: telling him with such sincerity that she was "nothing." She
thought that she really was nothing. He was more than touched; he was
shaken by the force of his own wondering admiration of her courage. Of
course he thought: "Is she in love with me?" He would not answer the
tremendous question. He would only say to himself that she was
pathetically lonely in the world, and that she comprehended him and
trusted him. It was the need to confess this fact that in her opinion
had made a meeting between them urgent for this very night. The meeting
had happened, and she had confessed. He desired, he yearned, to protect
her, to assuage her loneliness. Her eyes met his, and he saw happiness
in hers as the result of what she had seen in his. And in her happiness
he was happier than he had ever been. Happiness surged through him. Life
itself, the essence of life, throbbed serenely in his veins. There was
no sensual image in his mind, and no wish for anything but her
happiness. He was content. Hotels, a victorious career, autocracy, had
no significance for him. The poor little lamp was extinguished in a
general blaze of glory.
She said:
"I think I ought to go home."
"Now?"
Her trusting eyes implored him.
"Very well," he said.
The sandwiches had been served. He picked up the plate.
"Just one."
"Well, one," she acquiesced with the sweetest submission.
II
Evelyn discharged a bill which, even after a deduction of twenty per
cent. voluntarily conceded to him as a member of the great catering
profession, demonstrated that the pleasure-merger was meant to yield
large dividends. The pair rose and passed down the rooms, wafted along
by deferential bows and smirks; Evelyn went so far as to shake hands
with the beautiful manager. He was wondering why, for so short a stay,
Gracie had put herself and him to the trouble of visiting the Caligula,
when she suddenly stopped.
"Shall we have just one drink before we go?" she suggested, with bright
persuasiveness.
Since she was irresistible, he yielded. But he thought:
"What next? And what an anti-climax! When we've had the drink we shall
have to begin the departure business all over afresh. Nuisance!"
The man who was holding Evelyn's hat and overcoat moved away with an
unconvincing smile. They climbed on to the very high chairs at the bar.
"And the drink?" Evelyn questioned, disappointed in his miraculous girl.
"Oh! Your favourite," said Gracie.
"What's that?"
"Orange juice." She laughed quizzically. How did she know that he
affected orange juice? Still, he was relieved. The choice at any rate
showed that the miraculous girl had some sense. She went up again in his
esteem.
"_Deux jus d'orange nature_," she gave the order herself.
The barman disguised his stupefaction.
Gracie turned round to gaze at the dense mass of dancers contorted,
gyrating, swaying, perspiring within six feet of the high chairs. What a
crew (thought Evelyn)! Foolish faces, lascivious, abandoned, inane. How
grotesquely indecent the faces of the old men in the sweltering crowd!
How hard, insincere, grasping, or sentimental and sensually loving, the
faces of the girls! All pretending joy, in the hope of satisfactions to
come! All utterly despicable! He was ashamed to be there, ashamed to
have Gracie by his side, ashamed that she was not ashamed. Only the
orchestral trio were worthy of a mild respect. They were earning a
living, making money--not squandering it. Calmly, efficiently,
indefatigably doing their job, they plodded on from measure to measure,
hundreds of measures, thousands of measures, ruling the fatuous dancers;
and they would conscientiously plod on and on until five o'clock, when
the Caligula dosed. The entire spectacle was incomprehensible,
frightening. And was the spectacle of the dance-floor at the Imperial
Palace less incomprehensible? Evelyn's mind ran back to Volivia, now
dancing at the Casino de Paris.
Two glasses clinked on the counter. Gracie twisted her body, picked them
up both at once, and handed one to Evelyn. He said, after a sip:
"You might tell me just why you've come to an affair like this. Is it
amusing, or is it silly?"
"It's both," she answered. "And didn't you say yourself that everything
ought to be seen? I love it because it shows what people really are. I'm
always wanting to know that. I've enjoyed it. And so have you--so you
needn't say you haven't."
"Then I won't," he said grimly.
"But it is interesting, isn't it?" she cajoled, ignoring his grimness.
"Oh! It's _interesting_," he agreed, rather condescendingly.
"It teaches you, doesn't it?" She was still cajoling.
"Teaches you what?"
"About--well, human nature."
"Some sorts of human nature."
"Aren't we all God's creatures?" she said gravely.
He gave in with a sympathetic smiling nod. He was beaten.
Gracie's eyes ranged round the exciting walls; but while she gazed she
seemed to be absorbed in reflection.
Then two girls extricated themselves from the thronged floor and
approached the bar. One was tall and slim, in a close-fitting,
high-necked gown which rendered the wearer conspicuous by its long
trailing skirts. The other was short and plump in the scantiest possible
flimsy frock. The demeanour of the tall girl was protective. They
settled themselves at the bar, next to Evelyn and Gracie. The tall girl
furtively, delicately, fondled her friend, with whom she had been
dancing.
"Shall we go?" said Gracie, very abruptly. And in the doorway, as Evelyn
held aside the bead-curtain for her, she murmured harshly: "I can't
stand that kind."
"Why not?" Evelyn demanded. "Aren't we all God's creatures?" After being
defeated, he had won.
In the chill, dank winter night of the street, Gracie's car was waiting
with other cars, and her chauffeur with other chauffeurs, nonchalantly
patient. How these chauffeurs ate, drank, kept warm, passed the
interminable time, was their affair. Gracie's chauffeur saluted very
amiably; he might have had to wait till 5 a.m.
"I'll drop you," said Gracie.
"Oh no! It's out of your way. I'll get a taxi."
"It isn't out of my way." A pause. "And I don't care if it is. I'll drop
you. I can be home in twenty minutes at the most."
"Thank you."
The chauffeur whisked them away. In the darkness of the saloon they did
not speak. When the car swerved swiftly round a corner and Gracie was
thrown against Evelyn, she did not immediately straighten herself. They
were entering the Champs Elysées before she said:
"You're quite right."
He knew that she was referring to her attitude towards the two girls at
the bar.
"Well, well! Who knows?" said he quietly. He was asking himself when
they were to meet again. He wanted to suggest a rendezvous, but his
unconquerable reserve prevented him from doing so. "It's my place to do
it," he thought, impartially. Yet he could not do it. The car drew up at
the Montaigne. He looked at her. She looked at him. Something expectant
in her dimly seen eyes. He kissed her. The kiss fraternal, friendly,
companionable. Naught in such a kiss! Such a kiss was a duty. They had
been very 'near' to one another. The kiss gave him pleasure, too. And as
for her, it seemed to comfort her.
The chauffeur had hardly descended from the wheel.
"I say," she said, as Evelyn stepped down on to the kerb. "Where shall
you be to-morrow, about lunch-time?"
"Concorde," he replied.
"I'll telephone you," she said, and yawned.
"That's fine," he said. "Au revoir."
He thought:
"I was a perfect boor not to make the first move. However, it's all
right...."
The car was gone, and she in it. He stood on the pavement for a few
seconds, recalling the taste and touch of her soft girlish lips. "I am
an idiot," he murmured. A functionary emerged from the hotel to welcome
him.
CHAPTER LV
ON THE BOULEVARD
I
The next morning (a Saturday), after a very short and very restless
night, Evelyn was again working with M. Laugier in the latter's room in
the Concorde. But, at work, he had the appearance rather than the
reality of earnest application. And, when the Louis Philippe clock
struck noon, he began to grow anxious lest Gracie should telephone to
him once more while he was with M. Laugier, because M. Laugier would
certainly himself answer the ring, and he had no desire to see a
quizzical look on the southerner's face. Noon was the customary
lunch-hour for M. Laugier, and Evelyn made a polite remark to this
effect. M. Laugier replied that the clock was ten minutes fast. It was.
They laboured until the clock struck the half-hour. There had been no
ring. Evelyn was not surprised. He said to himself grimly that with
Gracie lunch-time meant any time between noon and three o'clock, or even
four. They went down into a little basement room, where M. Laugier
entertained his dear director to an admirable, plenteous meal.
Evelyn was now more at ease. When Gracie summoned him he would be told
merely that he was wanted on the telephone, and thus he could talk
comfortably to the girl from a telephone-cabin, with nobody to listen.
Of course she was a wonderful girl, but this admitted fact did not
prevent him from manfully and superiorly cursing her. She was really too
much of a mixture to appeal to a serious man. Her earnest moods
frightened him, and her moods of levity pained him. Yes, she had
nobility, impressive nobility. She had given him to think. Nevertheless
with a girl like that you never knew where you were. The disorderliness
of her mind was fantastic. She had no daily commonsense and no sense of
danger. To be connected with her was to be a kettle tied to the tail of
a magnificent mad thoroughbred dog. Was she in love with him? Who could
say? Probably even she herself could not say. She was a girl who might
ruin the careers of twenty men out of sheer impulse and caprice, and
then be startled twenty times to learn what she had done. He had best
bring the affair, courteously, to an abrupt conclusion. He would have no
tampering with his career, which had now reached a new and more splendid
period. He hoped that she would not ring him up. He would have finished
with Laugier by five o'clock, and if he did not hear from her, damned if
he would not depart for London on Sunday morning! He would have a sound
excuse for doing so, as she had omitted to give him her address at St.
Cloud. She could communicate with him, but he could not communicate with
her....
Well, she did not ring him up. The lunch was eaten without hurry, and
the after-lunch cigars were smoked as cigars ought to be smoked. At a
quarter to three the mutually dear directors returned to the study of
statistics and other documents. And now she would assuredly ring up.
Women were always confoundedly inconvenient. She would ring up, and he
would be compelled to go through again his tight-rope telephone
performance of the previous day. But there was no call. Once the
telephone-bell did tinkle, exciting alarm--also a not unpleasant
expectancy--but the call was for M. Laugier. Four o'clock. Dusk. Lights.
Five o'clock. Endless afternoon. She had not rung. Good. Excellent. Hang
it all! He was twice her age, and had an objection to rendering himself
ridiculous in the sight of men. The task of the dear directors was
finished, and satisfactorily. The Englishman, having congratulated the
Frenchman on the final result of the exhaustive inquisition, announced
that he should leave for London on the morrow. The Frenchman, charmed by
the congratulations, invited the Englishman to yet another meal--dinner.
Evelyn said regretfully that he had an engagement. "Ah!" twinkled M.
Laugier. They parted in the grand manner, providing a spectacle to
inspirit circumambient functionaries in the hall.
Evelyn came back a minute later, and said to the concierge:
"I suppose there's been no telephone message for me?"
There had not. He walked to the Hôtel Montaigne, and to the concierge of
the Montaigne he said:
"Any telephone message for me?"
None. He was on the point of asking for a corner seat to be reserved on
the "Golden Arrow"; but he did not ask. Better wait a while. She might
yet ring. He must give her every chance. At seven o'clock the frightful,
desolating vista of an empty evening stretched out before him. The
director of the Montaigne was out, and not expected home till midnight.
He had an impulse to ring up Laugier and say that, through a
misunderstanding, he was free after all; but he checked it. Too proud!
Instead, he got London, twice: first for the Palace and then for the
Wey, and at both hotels kept important members of the staffs engaged too
long in quite unimportant conversations. To Cousin at the Palace he said
everything except that he should return the next day. Besides, Oldham
would be still with his wife in the country. Not that Oldham was
indispensable. He could manage, was managing, very well without Oldham.
Still----
He dined alone, reading French newspapers. Then he strolled about the
hotel, chatting beautifully with the flattered staff. Then he walked to
the Etoile--a constitutional. Then it rained, and he returned in a taxi.
Then he went to bed. Only five minutes past ten. Clocks and watches
would not move. He stared at them for hours, and the hands budged not.
Yet they had not stopped, for he could hear his watch ticking plainly
enough.
The moment he was in bed and the light out, his thoughts began to whirl
round and round, and round and round. Why the hell had he not taken her
address? She might be ill. Or the Tessa girl might be ill. Gracie would
be extremely conscientious where Tessa was concerned. By the calendar he
was indubitably twice her age. But not by any other measurement. While
he was with her he had absolutely no feeling of seniority. They were
equals. He realised more and more in the darkness how wonderful she was.
He saw her image in the darkness. He had kissed her. Damn it! She had
invited his kiss, or at least she had warmly accepted it. Was this an
adventure to be clicked off as by hanging up a telephone-receiver? She
was miraculous--he had told her so--and because she was miraculous the
adventure was miraculous. Paris! The freedom of Paris! Marriage. Had she
been thinking of marriage? No. Anyhow, he would never marry. And never
would he allow his career to be fooled about with. But she was
miraculous. She said astounding things. She had a unique intelligence.
Why had he not taken her address? He was miserable, he the eponymous
hero of the greatest hotel-merger in all the annals of luxury. He knew
he would have no sleep that night.... He awoke. Four o'clock. He had
slept four hours. At the Palace he could have telephoned for some tea;
but the Montaigne was not the Palace--though it would be. He dozed at
intervals. Six o'clock. Seven o'clock. The electric timepiece on the
wall made a disturbing little noise every minute, as its finger was
pushed on. Exasperating. He had heard it ten million times. But the
Montaigne was not the Palace.... A faint, pale, discoloration on the
blind. Dawn. Eight o'clock. He would ring for tea, and also he would
give orders for a seat in the train. What an inferno of a night! He felt
like a towel flung into a corner of a bathroom.
II
Just as he was about to ring, he heard the telephone-bell delicately
murmuring on the floor, and he grasped the instrument. It could not be
she. But it was, and this was the most incredible, solacing thing that
ever befel any Englishman in Paris.
"Is that you, Evelyn?" Her rich voice, changing at nearly every word,
again like the sheen of shifting shot-silk.
"Speaking. Can't you tell my voice? I can tell yours." When he had
spoken he thought: "This won't do. I mustn't use that excited tone."
Then he waited. She did not continue immediately. It was a delightful
experience to be on his back in the wide bed and in the ease of pyjamas,
holding the mouthpiece to his lips and the receiver to his ear, and wait
for her next exciting sentence. All fatigue had gone from him. He
understood, afresh, that fatigue was a nervous sensation, an illusion
which another nervous sensation could obliterate as a sponge wipes
pencil-marks from a slate.
"I hope I haven't disturbed you too early." Her voice was now tense with
that terrible earnestness which on the previous evening had affrighted
him. He recalled her manner of saying in the Caligula, "I need to be
close to someone," and her manner of confessing that she had missed him
and that she had tried to make him jealous. A man would naturally,
inevitably, think that a girl who talked in that style was in love with
him, or fancied she was. But Evelyn could not honestly believe it. In
the first place, he could not see in himself anything for her to fall in
love with. And in the second place, it appeared to him that her accents
were too grave for mere love.
"Are you there? Can you hear? I said I hope I haven't disturbed you too
early."
His mind had been wandering--as hers too often would wander.
"I beg pardon. No, you certainly haven't disturbed me too early. In
fact, you're about twenty hours late in disturbing me. Didn't you say
you'd ring me up yesterday at lunch-time, or was I dreaming?" He meant
to put some affectionate banter into his tone, but the attempt was
somehow not very convincing.
"Yes. I know," she said. "But I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"Well. I couldn't. And I've rung you so early this morning because I
knew when I awoke I never _should_ ring you if I didn't do it
instantly--instantly. So I did."
"And you've just caught me in time. I'm leaving by the 'Golden Arrow,'
and I have to pack and do all sorts of things. And I'm not up yet."
Still the same unsuccessful effort towards cheerful banter.
"Evelyn, you aren't! You can't go to-day!" she protested solemnly.
"Why not?"
"I must see you."
It appeared to him that she was repeating the telephone conversation in
Laugier's office.
"Anything wrong?" he questioned, dropping the banter.
"I--I don't know." A hint of desperation in her voice. "We must have
lunch together. If you _must_ go back home to-night you can take the
four o'clock. Surely you can do that for me, Evelyn." She was pleading,
irresistibly.
"All right, my dear," he soothed her.
"Listen!" she went on, more vivaciously. "You can pack up your things
and bring them along with you, and then you can stay with me till it's
time for you to go to the station. You can have my car. Listen! I'll
come with you to the Gare du Nord and see you off."
"It's ideal," he answered. "But I wouldn't agree to being seen off by
anybody else." (Why had he gone out of his way to say a thing like
that?)
"You're teasing me," she said, as it were plaintively.
"I'm not! Now what time lunch?"
"I'll expect you at twelve o'clock. Noon. Listen. I'll send the car for
you to the Montaigne. Five to twelve. I know I shan't be fit to be seen
till twelve."
"But I can't get to St. Cloud in five minutes, can I?"
"Oh! I'm not at St. Cloud. I'm in the Boulevard des Italiens. She gave a
number.
"You must have got up frightfully early."
"No. I came here yesterday."
"Is it a hotel?"
"No."
"You're with friends, eh?"
"N-no. It's rooms. I had to be in Paris."
Evelyn was considerably startled, as much by her tone as by the news;
but he made no comment.
"I'll count on you then," she said.
"You may, my dear."
The talk ended there. Evelyn felt bewildered, perturbed; yet happy and
excited enough in his expectancy. He rang for tea, and he rang for the
valet.
Gracie's car arrived at the hotel ten minutes before time, and Evelyn's
suit-cases were downstairs ten minutes before the hour. Therefore he had
to wait, chatting with the concierge. Ridden by his mania for
punctuality, he objected as much to being one minute early as to being
one minute late. Yet he was quite hungrily anxious to set eyes on Gracie
again. He could not recall every detail of her features and bearing, and
he was impatient to refresh his memory. Also he was impatient to know
the reason of her formidable earnestness on the telephone; though he
kept saying to himself: "It's nothing. It's nothing. She's a child,
after all."
Rain began to fall, not unexpectedly. The boulevard had the desolating
aspect proper to a wet Parisian Sunday. Little traffic. Few wayfarers.
Imperfect umbrellas sailing horizontally along over glistening dirty
pavements, each umbrella the canopy of a mysterious, undecipherable
soul. All the shops shuttered in grey steel, except the tobacco-bureaux,
which were open. The kiosks, which offered for sale every newspaper and
periodical decent and indecent in Europe, had no customers. The Morris
Columns, with their advertisements of the stages of Paris, shone somehow
morbidly in the rain. The cafés did no business to speak of. All was
depressing, but not for Evelyn, whose age had gradually diminished to
twenty-five.
The car halted opposite a large but inconspicuous portico between two
big shuttered shops. Evelyn jumped out. His heart was perceptibly
beating. He was now only twenty-two. On one side of the portico was a
small, discreet brass-plate: "Appartements meublés." The entrance seemed
very dubious indeed. But within the entrance, against a pair of glazed
doors, stood Gracie, waiting for him, a figure of perfect, serious
respectability. She wore a mackintosh and carried a red Baedeker in
addition to her handbag. Close by her stood a sad, pale houseman, in
slippers, striped sleeves, and a long white apron.
"Well?" said Gracie, and shook hands.
The houseman silently went to the car, seized the suit-cases and
disappeared with them into the building.
III
"_C'est ça_," said Gracie to the chauffeur, who touched his cap and
drove away.
"Now we're here!" she said to Evelyn, and at last smiled.
"What's the object of that Baedeker?" he enquired, with a quasi-sardonic
blandness.
She replied: "I went out specially to buy it yesterday, and I shall
carry it with me everywhere. Just for a sign to myself that I've climbed
out of the rut of being always so correct and rich and knowing the best
places, and being superior to common people. That's why I bought the
mackintosh too. I want to be common. I'm sick of being in the swim--in
everything. It's come over me. I simply had to have a change. If I
hadn't I do believe I should have--well, I don't know what! I think it's
rather romantic to carry a mackintosh and a Baedeker and walk in the
rain. Don't you?"
"I see what you mean," Evelyn said negligently. "You aren't feeling
unwell, are you?"
"No. A bit tired, that's all. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. I had an idea you looked pale.... Well, what's the next
move?"
"The next move is lunch. We must have it early."
"Where?"
"Anywhere. The first rotten little place we see. There's lots of 'em
about. Places you and I have never heard of. I'm sure they're great fun.
Come along. Quick! Quick!"
She crossed the boulevard in front of him, and they turned westwards
towards the Madeleine; then into the rue Tronchet; half-way up the rue
Tronchet she took a side-street to the right. They did not speak.
"Now here's one, for instance," she said, pleased, stopping suddenly at
the first corner in the side-street. Yes, lo! A little restaurant and
wineshop, situated like a minor public-house in London. An untidy zinc
bar on the ground-floor, not as yet very busy. A narrow staircase hardly
visible in a corner.
"It must be up here," she murmured, and up she went, Evelyn following.
The dirty bare staircase, which in its middle part was dangerously dark,
ended in a restaurant of the same dimensions as the bar-room. A buffet.
A number of extremely small tables, covered with coarse grey-white
linen. Clumsy black-handled knives and black-handled three-pronged
forks. Salt in lumps. Bread in yards. Glass cruets, twin receptacles
containing vinegar and oil. Odours. Warmth. No air.
A plump, pleasant young woman in soiled blue dress and still more soiled
white apron was serving some dozen Sundayed customers of the small
bourgeois class. They were all absorbed in eating, and they were nearly
all talking; and while they masticated and talked they ledged the
extremities of their tools on either side of their plates. The napkins,
which a few men wore as bibs, were of the same material as the
table-cloths, but apparently larger. The scene was squalid enough, until
you regarded it as romantic, when it ceased to be anything else but
romantic.
The plump woman, lively without haste or flurry, pointed to an empty
table, with a friendly yet commanding gesture which said:
"You aren't absolutely compelled to take that table, but on the whole
you will be well advised to take it."
They took it. The waitress then ignored them; she attended to customers
in what she deemed to be the right order of precedence.
Evelyn removed his big overcoat, which was damp. Gracie loosed her new
mackintosh and disposed her bag and the Baedeker on a corner of the
table. They settled themselves on insecure cane-bottomed chairs. Nothing
more to do till the waitress should occupy herself with them.
Constraint and self-consciousness separated them. And they were marked
customers. Everybody in the room knew, and showed by curious glances,
that they were different from the ordinary clientèle. Evelyn felt
incapable of making conversation. Gracie appeared not to care whether
they conversed or were silent. The waitress at last arrived at their
table, and at once displayed an amiable and genuine interest in their
individual desires. Gracie altered her mind twice about dishes, but the
waitress was not to be ruffled by indecision.
"And to drink?" said she, when the menu was definitely fixed.
"Beer," said Gracie suddenly, not consulting Evelyn.
Then they had to be idle until the first dish and hot plates were
planted before them. Eating for a time obviated the social necessity for
talk.
The waitress popped her tousled head between them and asked:
"That pleases you?"
"Much," said Gracie.
"So much the better," said the waitress, and left them.
They were still separated by a constraint which, instead of diminishing,
grew in intensity. As for Evelyn, he feared to meet Gracie's eyes. Why?
He did not know. Honestly, he could not imagine why. All he knew was
that he felt ridiculously self-conscious, and that she too was
self-conscious. He could not even think consecutively. He did not try to
understand Gracie's motive in this extraordinary caprice. He tried
neither to examine the immediate past nor to foresee the immediate
future. He had to be content with mere existence in an uncomfortable and
interminable present.
"You've never been in a place like this before?" said Gracie.
"Oh! Haven't I!" said Evelyn, who was reminded of his first frugal visit
to Paris a quarter of a century earlier.
Islet of talk in a vast heaving ocean of taciturnity!
The meal did come to an end. Coffee was drunk, thick, out of thick
overflowing cups. Evelyn paid the bill, whose total was the equivalent
of five-and-sixpence. All the tables were filled. Two more customers
rose into the room from the stairway.
"We're interfering with business," said Evelyn, getting up.
The waitress warned Gracie of the peril of the dark stairs. They reached
the street, and took deep breaths.
"I loved it!" Gracie said with emphasis.
"Yes," Evelyn reluctantly agreed. "And now what next?"
Gracie glanced at him, half tenderly, half slyly.
"I'm still tired," she said. "I expect I've eaten too much. I did love
it. Suppose we go back to my rooms? It isn't raining."
CHAPTER LVI
DECLARATION
I
"Isn't it all lovely and vulgar?" Gracie exclaimed, looking at Evelyn
for some expression of morbid delight to match her own.
"No exaggeration to call it vulgar," said Evelyn with a humouring smile.
They had climbed some fusty, dusty, ill-carpeted stairs to what was
marked as the first-floor, though it was really the second, the first
being a mezzanine. Gracie had produced a latch-key to open the double
doors leading into her rented flat; they had gone through a small
antechamber or hall, and were now at the open double doors leading
therefrom into the drawing-room.
A large and lofty apartment: carved and partly gilded cornice,
discoloured ceiling, heavily patterned wall-paper torn in one or two
places, heavily framed oil-paintings of landscapes and of richly
breasted girls whose flimsy draperies were on the very point of slipping
off to disclose the root of all evil, a life-sized white statue of a
woman whose modesty was similarly imperilled, a stuffed black bear close
by it, heavy and cumbrous imitation Louis Quatorze furniture, all shabby
gilt, on the mantelpiece a vast ormolu and gilt clock (not going) with
vast candelabra to correspond, and a stained crimson carpet which
covered the entire floor. Seen on a stage from the pit such an interior
might have passed for luxury. Seen from within itself it was as
hatefully spurious as a false coin. It shocked Evelyn.
"I adore it because it _is_ so awful," said Gracie, as they gazed
around.
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know. I told you I wanted a change from all that
expensive respectability that I've been imprisoned in all my life. I
like to be vulgar and low sometimes. That's me, you know, and we may as
well be honest about it."
"'Expensive'!" said Evelyn. "You aren't getting this show for two francs
a night, I'm sure."
"No, it isn't cheap," she changed her ground. "But I don't mind that.
It's what I wanted. And I found it all by myself. Come and see my
bedroom."
She led him through a masked door in a corner of the drawing-room along
a short passage, and so into a bedroom of the same dimensions and in the
same style as the drawing-room: enormous bed, two night-tables, enormous
cheval-glass, enormous sofa, enormous dressing-table and enormous
wardrobe. The room was in a state of extreme disorder: open trunk, open
toilet-case, open door of the wardrobe, white fabric protruding from a
shut drawer in the wardrobe, garments thrown on several chairs and on
the floor. The garments, however, tended to civilise the room. Evelyn
noted the costly splendour of Gracie's brushes and other toilet utensils
spread higgledy-piggledy over the dusty glassy surface of the
dressing-table.
"The bed's very comfortable," Gracie remarked, apologetic despite
herself.
"Well, that's a good mark, anyway," said Evelyn. "Then you stayed here
last night, I see."
"Considering I rang you from here at eight o'clock this morning, you
might have guessed I hadn't just got here. Besides, didn't I tell you
I'd only that moment wakened up?"
"Of course you did," he agreed. "But I thought you said Tessa couldn't
be left."
"Oh! Tessa!" she answered lightly. "Tessa must stick it for a day or
two, like other people.... And you haven't even shaken hands with me
yet," she finished, as if adding one final item to a series of
grievances.
They were standing side by side. Gracie had pitched her hat and her
handbag and the Baedeker on to the bed, and she was taking off her
mackintosh. She stopped and looked sternly at him, one arm out of and
the other in the mackintosh. But though her glance was stern, the
forward, upward poise of the head and a tremor of the vermilion lips
seemed to draw him to her. He kissed her. A formal kiss, a kiss of
ceremony. Little more than a peck. No significance in it, even less
significance than there had been in the kiss of the previous night in
the car. He knew that between many men and women kissing was a habit,
like handshaking. And what could a kiss mean when the kisser was wearing
a big overcoat and the kissed entangled in a mackintosh? And they were
separated now, if not by constraint, by an obscure hostility.
Gracie, having got rid of the mackintosh, turned back towards the
passage. In the passage was a door.
"That's the bathroom and so on," she said. "You can hang your overcoat
in there--and powder your nose."
When he re-entered the drawing-room she was reclining with her feet
tucked under her on an easy-chair. Her eyes were closed.
"Sit down," she said weakly, not opening her eyes.
As he came in Evelyn touched a large gilded radiator; it was very hot.
"Oh, dear!" she said. "I do feel so tired."
"I thought you were never tired," he responded, with surprise, but
sympathetically.
"Well," she said, glancing at him covertly. "I do get tired sometimes in
the afternoon, and then I rest a bit, and then I'm perfectly all right
again. We're all ups and downs. Women, I mean. I say, would you mind if
I went and lay on the bed for a tiny weeny minute?"
"Do," said he.
"I think I will." She rose from the horrible easy-chair. "Here! You can
read this." She handed him 'The Nature of the Physical World,' which had
been insecurely perched on a console.
He accepted it in silence. She left the room, turning her head at the
door to give him a doleful smile. She forgot to shut the door, as she
forgot to shut all doors.
Evelyn, dropping the book, thought:
"This is rotten."
He felt exceedingly gloomy. Still, some intimacy had been reached. She
was treating him as an intimate. And he was less ill at ease. There was
something rather piquant, interesting, provocative, in the situation,
and in her strange demeanour. And at worst they could not be
interrupted. They had themselves to themselves.
He strolled to one of the big windows and looked forth at the boulevard.
Rain, persistent and ruthless. The road and the pavements were mirrors
reflecting the melancholy of the universe. He thought he heard a voice,
distant, thin, shrill, lacking its customary richness.
"Evelyn! Evelyn! Eve_lyn_!"
"Coming."
He went to the bedroom, of which the door was wide open. He halted at
the door.
"Yes?"
She was not on the bed; she was in the bed. Under her head was her own
pillow. He saw her frock on a chair. Other garments, which had
previously disfigured and civilised the room, were now hidden somewhere,
and the baggage was stacked in a corner.
"I think I must have some tea," she murmured, eyes directed towards the
ceiling.
"Well, there's some attendance here, I suppose. I'll ring, shall I?"
"Oh yes, there's attendance of a sort," she answered, shifting her head
to look at him. "Come in. Come in. I shan't explode." She was fretful.
He advanced into the room. "But they'll never be able to make my kind of
tea. I'm going to get up and make it myself. The things are in the
bathroom. I never travel without my tea gadgets. Will you have some
too?"
"You stay where you are," he said firmly, feeling sorry for her. "I'll
make the tea."
"But you can't make tea."
"Can't I? You'll see in a minute. I've shown more than one person at the
Palace exactly how tea ought to be made."
"No. I can't have you making tea for me. It's not decent."
"Please do as I tell you," he said sharply.
She yielded with meekness.
"You are a darling."
II
In the bathroom he discovered the tea-gadgets complete on a tray on the
floor, concealed beyond the end of the bath. Everything was there:
saucepan, teapot, hot-water jug, cups and saucers (two), spoons, sugar,
white dry "metra" fuel, a lemon, a monogrammed fruit knife, a box of
matches, and a small canister of tea. It was true that he could make
tea. And indeed one of his theories, perhaps sex-biased, was that men
could make tea better than women. While the water was boiling he sliced
the lemon, warmed the pot, and dropped four spoonfuls of tea into it. No
hitch. No slip. Perfection. The watched saucepan did boil, with
startling alacrity. As he carefully carried the loaded tray into the
bedroom, he was aware of an even higher degree of intimacy. Strange
vocation for him, being a chambermaid! But he enjoyed it, and was proud.
Gracie smiled at him celestial thanks.
"You might stick it down here on the bed. There's plenty of room. And
will you mind shutting the door?"
"Lady," said he, depositing the tray on the soiled crimson satin
eiderdown, which must have had vast and varied experience in keeping
human bodies warm. "I was about to do so. But having both hands full of
tray--the rest is silence." He thought, carefully shutting the door,
that a request to shut doors came ill from the greatest leaver-open of
doors that ever lived.
"I like you when you're sprightly," she said. "And I like your new
suit."
"It's an old suit," he corrected her.
"Yes, of course. That's what father always says."
"And while I'm about it," he said, "I'll shut a few more doors."
And having shut the door of the room he shut the doors of the wardrobe,
opened a drawer, straightened some linen that had been sticking out of
it, and pushed it to again. Gracie smiled at the operation, lowering her
eyelids.
"Will you pour?" she asked.
"I shall pour," he answered, drawing a heavy gilt chair up to the
bedside.
"I'm so grateful," said she, relapsing into fatigue after her few
sentences of liveliness.
He poured out the tea. She turned and lay on her side, facing him, and,
her head propped on her right hand, took the cup without the saucer in
her left hand and sipped.
"You were quite right, darling," she said. "You can make tea. It's a
gift."
They each drank two cups.
"Another."
"No, thanks," she said. "You might put the tray on the floor. It's only
in the way."
"On the table will be better," he said, and moved the tray.
"Won't you sit on the bed?" she suggested.
He sat on the bed.
"Now do you feel better?"
"I just want you to listen," she said, ignoring his question. "I've got
to tell you something, and I swore to myself I'd tell you instantly we'd
had tea. All day yesterday I was dying to tell you, but I couldn't make
up my mind to it. I kept putting it off and putting it off. That's why I
didn't telephone you. And it's why I was so stiff and awkward with you
at lunch. Nervousness. You know--it stops you from being natural. You
can't be natural and easy when you know you have something awful to do
and can't bring yourself up to the scratch. It sort of weighs you down.
And I'm so tired. I couldn't sleep last night."
"Nor could I," said Evelyn.
She glanced at him sharply.
"Oh, couldn't you sleep either?" She seemed pleased.
"I'm in a most terrible mess. Terrible. I don't expect you can help me.
But if you can't no one else can. I know I oughtn't to worry you. Still,
when one's desperate"--she paused--"as I am. Evelyn, my dear----" She
was silent.
He thought, anxious:
"What now? What's the scrape she's in? It's an infernal shame the way
her father leaves her to take care of herself. She's incapable of taking
care of herself. Look at her now in this place, and me sitting on her
bed, and her father not giving a damn where she is!"
Her face was pathetic to him. The sight of it roused his protective
instinct, his instinct for solving problems and for setting people in
the right path and seeing that they kept to it. Whatever foolishness she
had committed, his wisdom must save her somehow from the consequences of
it. And he was convinced in his pride that there was no difficulty that
he could not vanquish, no trouble that he could not conjure away. A
nuisance, of course; but nuisances had to be squarely confronted. The
image of the four o'clock train shot surprisingly through his brain. He
had forgotten it.
"Well?" he encouraged her.
"I'm too fond of you, my dear."
As the full significance of those first five words penetrated into his
mind--a matter not instantaneous but occupying a few seconds--his first
reflection was: "This is what comes of having anything to do with a
hotel-merger!" And his second: "But what is there in me to attract her?"
He had had this thought before, but not so puzzlingly. He opened his
lips to speak, though he did not know what he would say. She raised her
arm for silence, gazing at him with a long, woebegone, martyrised,
mercy-imploring look. He was not genuinely startled by her confession.
He had only been misled for a moment by the phrase, 'most terrible
mess,' and the word 'desperate': which had appeared to him to indicate a
calamity more material than unrequited passion. Now her soul was newly
lit for him, and he began to discern a little more plainly the deeps of
her character. He understood, as by revelation, that different people
may have different estimates of the importance of passion. The question
was one which he had seldom pondered, and never exhaustively.
She proceeded:
"When I told you how I'd been thinking of you for weeks, and how I'd
come to London just to see you, and all that, I was putting it much too
mildly. It was far worse than that. One reason why I've been so keen on
taking charge of Tessa was to keep my mind off _you_. Yes. I may as well
admit it. If you hadn't happened to catch sight of me at Calais, I
should have tried never to see you again. Because I was frightfully
depressed in London--I mean about you. The walk in the rain was lovely,
and we _were_ near--weren't we?--only somehow things were very chilly,
very chilly. But when we met at Calais like that, I thought that
couldn't be just accident. I don't believe in chance, but I do believe
in providence--God. Yes, I do. I believe God's in everything. I couldn't
get over that meeting. So I rang you up. I had to. And you were so sweet
on Friday night--though you weren't a bit sweet on the telephone on
Friday afternoon--and then your knowing what I'd been thinking while
they sang that trio, and your thinking the very same--well, that was too
much for me, that was! I might have got over the meeting at Calais, but
I couldn't get over _that_. I thought, surely it must mean something. So
yesterday I took this flat, and I hadn't the pluck to ring you up until
this morning. You know, my dear, I've been rather in hell, still am. I'm
not the tiniest morsel conventional. No! But there's something deep in
me that says to me a woman ought never to say the things to a man that
I'm saying to you now. It's against nature; and nature isn't
conventional; it's against my nature--part of my nature. Only, however
deep you dig into your nature, there's always a layer that's deeper. And
it was that deeper layer, when I half got down to it, that decided me I
_ought_ to speak to you. Must speak, in fact. And--and--then you----"
He foresaw that she was going to remind him that he had kissed her. But
he was wrong. She definitely stopped. He liked her for not referring to
the kisses. She was too magnanimous to refer to them; and she had too
just a sense of proportion to give any real importance to such social
trifles. How far they had progressed in intimacy, and at what speed,
since her first telephone-call only two days earlier! And it was all due
to her initiative alone! He felt once again, and more strongly, the
impulse to protect her, to save her from the consequences of her
headlong, capricious temperament. He admired her gift of self-analysis;
as for him, he was always very reluctant even to try to analyse himself;
he accepted himself as he was, and indeed he regarded self-analysis as a
rather morbid exercise. Nevertheless it suited some people, and it
suited her, and she could do it. That bit about her not being
conventional but feeling all the same how it was against nature for a
woman to say to a man what she'd said to _him_--that was good; it showed
a masculine breadth of mind. And then deliberately to go against her own
axiom of conduct--that showed a still greater breadth of mind,
super-masculine. But of course she did possess a mind; her conversation
continually proved it. She could be so formidably, so disturbingly
serious. With all her disadvantages, she was a creature to respect.
Impossible, even in one's most secret soul, to condescend to her. And
now marvellous her mere voice! It enriched everything she said.
But for him a woman was either an asset or a liability, and she would be
an everlasting liability. Long ago he had decided that to live with her
would be to live in an inferno mitigated by transient glimpses of
paradise. Leave her for your work in the morning, and you could never be
sure what would not happen to her while she was out of your sight; you
would be on pins until you saw her again in the evening, and after that
you would have no peace of mind until she was asleep. To live with such
a woman would be a career in itself. All these thoughts ran through his
mind in a moment.
She had put him in a perfect hell of an awkward position. But that was a
point which would not have occurred to her, naturally! She was
egregiously self-centred. What in the name of God could he answer to
her? Withal, he was happy as well as distracted. The situation was
terrible, but it was terribly flattering, and there was beauty in it,
and the beauty communicated itself to the whole environment.
The rain rained harder than ever; through the interstices of the
once-white curtains he could distinguish raindrops slipping down the
window-pane; but now the rain, the sadness of the implacable winter
rain, was beautiful. Her toilet-gadgets, offspring of wealth and taste,
were beautiful; the eye could gaze on them with a voluptuous
satisfaction. And her blue négligé, or whatever it was--wondrous. And
how well it became her hair and her pale face. And they were together in
an inviolable solitude. They were on the boulevard, but as safe from
prying interruption as in a boat by themselves at sea. For nobody knew
where he was, and he was sure that nobody knew where she was. They were
lost and undiscoverable in Paris. Something beautiful in that piquant,
provocative security.
She said, in a lower tone:
"Don't say anything. Don't answer. I know I've put you in a frightfully
awkward position. I know. I know." Her voice sank. Then louder: "Will
you draw the curtains, please? It's getting dark. I hate these winter
afternoons, but I love winter evenings.... Yes, I know I've made it
awkward for you. I know."
Her voice died quite away. She was not so self-centred after all; he had
been unjust to her. 'They' had an extraordinary faculty for putting a
man in the wrong.
III
He drew the heavy curtains. He saw a light behind him. She was sitting
up and had switched on one of the bed-lamps. He switched on the other
lamp, the one nearer the window. In the soft shaded light the room grew
quite presentable, and its false luxury authentic. She patted the
surface of the bed at the spot where he had been sitting, to indicate
that he must resume his seat. He obeyed. It was all a marvellous
experience, unique. She had not uttered a word.
"Don't say anything until to-morrow," she said. "Say nothing.
Nothing.... You're very dignified. But then you always are. I do
admire your dignity."
He thought:
"'To-morrow!' And my train this afternoon?"
His train, however, seemed to have lost every shred of its importance.
It was not his train; it was no train in particular; it was a train that
left Paris monotonously every afternoon at four o'clock.
She was now sitting up, and therefore nearer to him. She looked away
from him, staring with a stern, mournful expression at the expanse of
the window-curtains. She turned and looked not at his face, but at his
right hand, which was resting on his right thigh as he sat half-turned
towards her on the side of the bed. She leaned forward a little more to
pat his hand, maternally to soothe him, girlishly to excuse herself for
having put him in a position so intensely difficult. The folds of the
blue wrap slipped aside. He observed for the first time that under it
she was not wearing a camisole; she was wearing pyjamas, unbuttoned at
the neck. She had undressed completely and put herself to bed in
earnest. As she leaned forward he could not fail to see her sumptuous
breasts, mysterious within the shadow of the loosened, thin-spun
garment.
What elemental force, raising his left hand, drew it to her shoulder and
laid his fingers gently on her velvet-covered shoulder? Madness perhaps,
but a divine madness. There was something tremendously exciting in the
fact that whereas he was fully clad and might have walked out into the
street without causing remark, she was unseemly for any eye but his. Her
expression changed slowly from sternness to soft, timid bliss. She was
very beautiful: her face, her hair, her eyes, her lips, her bosom--all
were intolerably beautiful. Their beauty redeemed the entire room from
its horrid vulgarity. The lamps had somewhat changed the room, and now
her beauty, trembling, changed it completely. Bliss awaited him, a dozen
inches off. There were no liabilities, only assets. He ceased to reason.
He felt that reason was an absurdity. Reason was dissolved in emotion.
Anxieties, apprehensions, careers, worldly considerations were cast away
and forgotten. His hand still on her shoulder, he pushed her backwards
on to the pillow, pushed her violently; and she yielded in ravished
acquiescence to his violent gesture. And waited, resigned, humble,
ecstatic in bliss.
He leaned over her, and kissed her open mouth. She closed her eyes.
Suddenly she lifted her head an inch from the pillow and repaid his
kiss. And he too, having given happiness to her, was happy beyond
measuring. No matter what the price, the happiness outvalued it.
She whispered:
"And did you really not sleep last night?"
He nodded.
She whispered:
"So we were both lying awake." He nodded.
"Were you glad when I rang you up on Friday?" she asked, whispering.
He nodded. He could distinguish every detail of her eyes as he gazed at
her, the down on her cheeks.
"How pale you are!" he whispered: the first words he had spoken!
"I didn't put any rouge on this morning," she whispered. "I didn't want
to look well. I wanted to look pale. Was it wrong of me?"
He shook his head.
"Sure?"
He nodded, in his heart justifying what he imagined to be her motive.
She said: "I don't mean I did it to make _you_ think I looked pale----"
"But I did think you looked pale," he murmured. (Once more he had been
misjudging her.)
"I did it because I wanted to look pale for myself," she finished her
sentence. "And so you noticed I looked pale?"
He nodded.
"Very pale?" She was smiling.
"Rather pale."
"And did you feel sorry for me?"
He nodded.
"Were you sorry for me because you thought I was sort of pining away for
you?"
"No."
"I'm so glad. That would have been awful. I couldn't have borne it. Then
why?"
"I thought you were unwell. And you looked so tired."
"Did I? Well, I was tired. But I'm not tired now. Are you?"
"Not a bit."
"How lovely!... Darling, tell me all you ever thought about me. I
want to know all you ever thought about me. I know I'm an egotist, so
you needn't tell me that. Tell me all the nice things."
She was a child, he reflected, answering her smile with a smile. Fancy
being curious about what people thought of you, about the impression you
were making! It never occurred to him to wonder what impression he
himself was making. He just went blandly on his way. Perhaps it was he
who was the egotist, with his instinctive indifference to outside
opinion.
He said, louder:
"You haven't been very egotistic with Tessa."
"Ah! But that's a special kind of thing. That was showing-off--to
myself. Tell me some more."
"I'll tell you the finest thing I know about you. I've never forgotten
it and I never shall."
"What?" she whispered, eager. "Whisper it."
He whispered:
"'Be still, and know that I am God.'"
"But I never said that to you. Quoted it, I mean. I can remember
everything I ever said to you--or you said to me. Everything."
"No. But you said it to your father, and he told me. It puzzled your
father, but it did impress him." He thought for a moment of her
neglectful father.
"But it didn't puzzle you."
"It's the greatest saying ever said," he replied. She raised her head
and gave him a delicious warm kiss; then, contemplating, slowly stroked
his cheek.
"How well you shave!" she murmured. "Much better than father. Tell me,
you weren't annoyed that morning when I had the nerve to ask you to take
me with you to Smithfield?"
"A bit. For a moment."
"Oh! How honest you are, darling! I adore you for that. I'd sooner hear
that than something smooth. But did you enjoy the visit--me being with
you?"
"Yes I did, as soon as I'd given myself up to it."
"Wouldn't you like to read what I wrote about it, in my book. I've got a
carbon of it here. It's in the middle drawer of the dressing-table."
"Shall I get it now?"
She nodded. He stirred.
"It must be very uncomfortable for you, on your elbows like this, and
your legs all twisted."
Yet she had called herself an egotist!
He found the typescript half-buried in gloves and handkerchiefs. He held
it in his hand, without opening it. No title on the limp green paper
cover. No name. No clue. Nothing. He fingered the dark green silk which
bound the sheets together. Her book would certainly show what she
thought of him, her reactions to him; and for this reason alone he was
acutely impatient to read it. How wrong he had been: superiorly
crediting himself with indifference to outside opinion about himself! He
was quite as curious concerning her estimate of him as she had been
concerning his estimate of her. Through the curtains he could hear the
drumming of the raindrops on the pane.
"I'm to read this thing now, eh? At once?"
"Of _course_!"
"Shall I go into the other room to read it?"
"No. Stay here. I should be so lonely."
"I can't read by those bed-lights, I'm afraid."
She sprang like a leopard suddenly out of the bed, rushed to the door,
and turned on the chandelier-lights, then to the dressing-table and
turned on the two toilet-lights.
"_Now_ can you see to read?" She was standing close by him. The blue
négligé was a lovely flimsy thing. Below its curving hem showed her blue
trousers, and below the ends of the trousers her feet, bare. Her eyes
flashed with joy and pride. He recalled the soft assent of her shoulder
under his hand, and thought: "What an ass I was to hesitate for a single
second!" Did one hesitate to enter heaven? And the pure
intimacy--exquisite, almost past enduring! He sat down in the sole
easy-chair, and opened the typescript. She moved to and fro restlessly.
He glanced at her with a benevolent reproving frown.
"Look here," he said. "If you want something to do, you might take away
that tea-tray. I'm sure you're like me--you hate to see things out of
place, especially on the floor. In fact while you're about it you might
do a bit of washing-up." His tone was lightly teasing.
She smiled enigmatically. "But there's nothing in there to wipe with."
"There's a million towels or so. I saw them."
"Very well."
She stooped and picked up the tray, and off she went, lodging the rim of
the tray against the door-jamb while she turned the knob.
"And leave the door open," he said. "Leave both doors open."
"But why?"
"I want to hear the sound of you washing-up."
His false sternness enchanted her.
"I shall spoil my beautiful dressing-gown," she objected.
"Take it off then." She vanished, and came back in a moment in her
pyjamas and threw the peignoir into the middle of the bedroom floor,
where it lay--furnishing the room afresh. She was gone. He could feel
her ardent happiness like a heat-ray. Soon he could hear, faintly, the
sound of crockery under the hands of the new kitchen-maid. He was
ineffably happy. Out of what strange material could felicity build
itself!
IV
In such felicity he would have been unable to concentrate on any other
book, but he found that on this book he could concentrate without the
least difficulty. It began with her sensations in Smithfield Market. It
was frank, wholly shameless. Was it fit for print in England? Well, it
must be, since a publisher had agreed to publish it. He read on the
second page that her companion and escort was masterful without quite
knowing it. She knew in herself that he was masterful, and she knew it
too from the demeanour of others towards him. He expected to find a lot
more about her companion. But he was disappointed. The book was about
her, not about him. Was he masterful? He supposed he must be. Because
she could not be wrong. Everything else in the chapter was so
convincing. He marvelled at the total picture of her reactions to
Smithfield. He had to admit that he had been blind to some of the secret
essence of Smithfield. She was more fully revealing it to him. Her
reference to the nun was shocking. But beautiful too. On each page she
unveiled beauty whose existence he had not suspected.
He thought:
"She has a lovely mind.... Of course. I knew that before.... The
girl's a genius! But is she? Can I judge? She may be able to write this,
and nothing else. Anyway, she's a genius in herself, even if she sits
idle and doesn't do a thing. I'm a concerted idiot. I've been
condescending to her."
Atter a short time she reappeared in the bedroom.
"Have you read it--about the meat-markets?"
"I've just this moment finished that part, and I'm going on."
"Well?"
"I think it's simply wonderful. That's all--for the present."
"You really mean that? Be careful of your words. Because I shall believe
you."
"I really mean it."
"Oh, my dear!" She breathed. "I'm so relieved. You can't tell how happy
you make me. I had a sort of idea it mightn't be anything after all."
"Well, it is something after all."
"You're a great reader, aren't you?"
"I've read a fair amount. But I've never read anything like this--since
Marie Bashkirtseff."
"Who was she?"
"Never heard of her? No. Of course you wouldn't have heard or her. She
was before your time. But in _her_ time she made a devil of a stir in
the world."
She approached the chair where he was reclining.
"Thank you," she said, with extraordinary modesty, and kissed him.
He calmly turned a page.
"I'll tell you some more later." He bent his eyes to the new page.
"But you can leave it now," she suggested.
"Why?"
"Why! I want to talk."
"I will not leave it," he said positively.
"But don't you want us to talk?"
"I want to listen to you. And this is you." He raised the typescript.
"Haven't you got anything to do?"
"Yes. Plenty."
"Well, go and do it then. But not here."
"Why not here?"
"Because you're too exciting."
"Very well, darling," she acquiesced, looked for and snatched up her
handbag and departed, shutting the door.
His attention was now distracted from the page. What would an impartial
observer say? There he was, at his ease in her bedroom. And she in
pyjamas! Pooh! There was not and could not be an observer, impartial or
otherwise. Neither he nor she had anybody to consider. They were their
own convention-makers. And what was wrong with pyjamas? He was ridden by
outworn social prejudices. In these days did not both sexes go to
cocktail-parties in pyjamas. And her suit, in addition to being at least
as decent as an evening frock, was very handsome and very elaborate:
obviously intended to be seen and admired. The fact was he was being
scared by the word 'pyjamas' and its associations. Silly! And if anyone
was entitled to see and admire pyjamas, and her in them, was not he the
man? Had she not welcomed his kisses as she lay in bed in those very
pyjamas? If so, why in the name of reason should he not watch her as she
walked to and fro in the pyjamas? Yes, utterly silly! And more--was she
not the writer of the astonishing pages which had thrilled him? She, the
actual author, somewhere outside, probably in the bathroom, obedient to
him, submitting meekly to his command! That was what was so
marvellous--marvellous enough to be hardly credible. Had not such a girl
the right to wear what she chose? And still more--he was happy. And she
was happy. He repeated to himself that they were their own
convention-makers. And why not?
She returned again, but not soon. He was half-way through the
typescript.
"How do I look?" she asked, as she stood close by him. Her cheeks had
become delicately rose. She no longer wanted to be pale for herself. She
wanted to signalise her happiness, her perfect content.
"You're an artist," he answered.
"Say you're happy," she appealed to him, finger on lip, rather
childlike.
"I am." His tone was gay. "Well, I see I mustn't read any more just
now." She took the manuscript from him. "But I shan't be properly happy
till I've read every word of it. And that's your fault. I expect you
know I've missed my train."
"You _haven't_!"
"Let's guess what time it is."
"Three o'clock," she guessed.
"I guess five to four."
His watch said five o'clock. They were both astounded. He had always
maintained that he had the hour continuously at the back of his mind, to
ten minutes or so. And now he was sixty-five minutes out. His happiness
was mysteriously increased, his spirits heightened.
"What does it matter?" he exclaimed joyously. "I'd telephoned to London,
but I can call them up again----"
"And say you've missed the train."
"Not a bit of it. I've got my reputation to think of. I never miss
trains. I'll say I've been kept."
"And so you have!" she said. "But you're glad, aren't you?"
He nodded. She put her arms round him.
"I'd better telephone to the hotel for a room," he added.
"Not yet," she appealed.
"All right. Plenty of time. But oughtn't you to be getting dressed?"
"Dressed? I don't want to waste my time dressing. Shan't I do as I am?
"But we shall have to eat, shan't we? And I gather we can't eat here."
"Of course we can eat here," she said. "You don't know your Paris,
darling. All we have to do is to telephone, to Larue's--say. And order
what we like. They'll deliver it here, complete; and they'll take away
the ruins and remains. I'll do it now, shall I?"
"'Do it now' is a pretty sound motto."
"What would you like?"
"What you'd like."
"You must."
She ran off into the drawing-room, where the telephone was.
Alone, he smiled to himself.
She came running back.
"Tell me what champagne," she said, as it were breathless.
"Krug 1919."
She vanished.
He thought:
"Now where do I stand with her? I've kissed her. That kind of a kiss
must mean something. What? What does it mean to _her_? Marriage? I don't
care whether it means marriage or not. No, I don't care!" He had been
starved of women for long. The fast was at an end now.
She reappeared, and lay down like an animal on the hearthrug, shaking
her head at the suggestion of the sofa.
A little before half-past six he had finished reading the account of her
reactions to life in London and Paris: fragmentary impressions connected
only by her individuality; a series of Vérey lights that shot up into
the sky, dazzlingly illuminated the dark landscape with a strange,
perhaps sinister revealing splendour, faded, and left the landscape in
darkness again. Not all the flashes were equally vivid; the later were
not as brilliant as the earlier; but on the whole the book was to him
what he had called it: wonderful, simply wonderful. It had fascinated
and somewhat dismayed him. Some minutes elapsed before he could think
himself back into the accustomed three dimensions of daily existence. He
reflected: "But this girl is staggering." It was scarcely to be credited
that there she lay enveloped in the blue négligé, on the hearthrug at
his feet, her slippers kicked off and her narrow feet bare, poring over
'The Nature of the Physical World,' which apparently, from the look of
the volume, she had by no means yet finished. Twice, with an
exclamation, she had sprung up and run into the drawing-room, and
through two open door-ways he could hear her loud, clear,
telephone-voice, altering in French her order for the dinner.
Then they talked, she on the floor and he in the easy-chair, her fingers
occasionally stroking his ankles. The intimacy of their seclusion! The
intimacy was exquisite to him! And plainly so to her too! The old
question: What could she see in him? Then a bell rang, and startled him.
"Don't move!" she smiled. "It's our dinner. I'll see to it."
Her tone and radiant glance thrilled him. He had never seen anybody as
rapturously beatified as she was. And he the sole cause! If he had
repelled her, what would have been her state at that moment? She passed
quickly into the drawing-room and closed the door. He dashed on tiptoe,
stealthily, into the bathroom to prepare himself for the enchanting
meal.
"Oh! There you are!" she said as he emerged.
She was coming out of the drawing-room. She clasped his hand and without
a word they went to dinner. The round centre table was laid for two; and
she must have laid it herself, for the two places were set close
together.
"It's what's called a cold collation, except for the soup. Do you know
how to open champagne?" She laughed.
It was all miraculous. At moments she sat on his knee, and they ate from
one plate.
He thought: "This cannot last. It's bound to end. It's too good to
last."
Hardly had they finished when the bell rang, and startled him again.
"They've come for the things. I told them nine o'clock. Can it be nine
o'clock already? Now you go back into the bedroom, that's a good boy.
I'll attend to all this."
He obeyed. She ran after him into the bedroom, snatched at her handbag,
kissed him--a touch only.
"Here!" he said. "I'll----"
"I'm the hostess, if you don't mind," she said, giving him another kiss.
And was gone. Both doors closed.
His heart was thumping in nervousness. The thing was bound to end; and
the duty to end it was his. She returned.
"Coast clear!" she said. "How stuffy this central heating is!" She threw
down the négligé.
"Well," he said, extremely self-consciousness. "I shall have to be off
soon." He had said it. He had no feeling at all of having eaten and
drunk.
"But surely, darling," she murmured, facing him with a candid, artless
look of pure amazement. "Surely you aren't thinking of leaving me here
all by myself to-night." Her eyes moistened.
CHAPTER LVII
THE GLOVE
I
Next morning at about ten o'clock Evelyn, in his big overcoat, was
sitting on the _terrasse_ of a large café on the north side of the
boulevard. The January air was sharp enough, but Evelyn sat in full
sunshine under the glass roofing, and an absolutely clear pale-blue sky
above. Not a trace of mud or dampness on the boulevard and its broad
pavements. You could no more believe that the Parisian climate was
capable of serious rain than you could believe that a pretty and
charming woman seen at a party was capable of a scowl or a tantrum.
The staff was attending to two huge stoves whose warmth enabled
customers to persist in the open-air habit characteristic of Paris.
Evelyn had before him on a tiny round table a tray containing chocolate,
rolls, butter, and a glass of cold water. Boulevard coffee he had reason
to distrust. Tea, which might have been excellent, would have suited his
alimentary tract better than the chocolate; but he had ordered chocolate
for the novelty of it, for the joy of the first sip, and because he knew
that he could rely on its quality. The rolls nearly equalled the rolls
of the Imperial Palace; the butter was delicious. He revelled in
anticipation of the light meal; he would be sorry when the last morsel
was eaten, the last drop drunk, and the palate-cleansing water had to be
tasted. He revelled in the generous sunshine. He revelled in the
incessant traffic, the tooting of horns, the moving spectacle of
wayfarers brushing past his table, a little shabby and hurried, not a
single smart girl, and hardly a man whose face did not show the Latin
melancholy, exacting, covetous, implacable, and preoccupied by desires;
hundreds of those pallid faces in the great motor-buses and in the
taxis; sardonic faces of the taxi-drivers; occasionally a magnificent
auto; occasionally a tourist-crowded charabanc; a small policeman with a
big white bâton; shops, other cafés right and left and opposite;
enormous gilt signs on the monotonously similar façades, and signs black
against the pale-blue sky; Morris Columns advertising the performances
at the Opéra, the Opéra Comique, the Français, the Odéon, the Variétés,
the Palais Royal, the Trianon, the Casino de Paris, etc., etc.: Paris.
He had a sensation of vigorous well-being, of adventure, of an unplanned
idle day awaiting him. And he had a sensation of freedom. Who would have
foreseen that he could share a bed with a fellow-creature and yet would
sleep moveless for more than six hours, awaking at nine o'clock,
fatigued, but agreeably fatigued, and refreshed?
Gracie, on being asked at 2 a.m. about the hour of breakfast had said
that she would sleep till called, and that if she was not called she
would sleep for ever--noon, 2 p.m.! She was like that. She had told him
to call her. He had refused; she must have her sleep out. She had
repeated with a yawn that she must be called--she could not bear the
thought of losing in sleep the consciousness of bliss. A slightly
peremptory note in her rich, tired voice. Silence. Sleep.
At nine o'clock, by the twilight of a bed-lamp, he had gazed at her
asleep. Unique vision: relaxed, the lips parted, the eyes hidden, quiet,
regular breathing, youth, beauty. He had gazed, and then risen. If she
wakened, so much the better for her satisfaction. If she did not waken,
so much the better for her health, and for his satisfaction in adhering
to his refusal to wake her. He had left the room to bathe; returned; she
still slept. He had transferred his studs to a clean shirt, opened and
shut drawers, found another suit and pair of shoes, every operation
making a noise. She had not stirred. The project of a solitary breakfast
on the boulevard had irresistibly enticed him. He had discovered her
latch-key, and crept away, like a thief in danger of being caught. Then
the sunshine had smitten him. Yes, he was aware of a sensation of
masculine freedom.
As he luxuriated in the breakfast he kept muttering, or perhaps only
thinking, to himself: "By God! By God!" Meaning that he had done it, had
voyaged to Cythera. He muttered: "She is mine! Incredible! She is mine!
What about her father? Curse her father!" And thinking of the smooth
organisation of the admirable dinner, he muttered: "By God! She knows
how to make a man comfortable!" This had rather surprised him.
Nevertheless, on reflection it was not so surprising. Had she not
presided over her father's household! He thought: "Lucky I had my
luggage with me!" Then a shaft pricked him: "Had she schemed that
luggage business beforehand?" No matter! He drew out the shaft and threw
it down. She was marvellous, she was miraculous, and she was his. A
virgin? He shook his head. No matter! These notions about the importance
of virginity were obsolete. What was her sexual history? He had no right
to enquire. Her experiments were her own business. One must be fair.
Beyond doubt she was passionately in love with him. He thought of her
with extreme tenderness. He could have forgiven her anything. A woman of
her extraordinary qualities was entitled to a code of her own. He
exulted in her.
A waiter having emerged from the interior of the café, to serve another
customer who had rapped impatiently on the window, Evelyn asked for a
newspaper--any newspaper. Two very well-dressed English tourists
strolled past the _terrasse_. He had a vague memory of having once seen
them, the woman assuredly, dining in the restaurant of the Imperial
Palace. They did not notice him.
"By Jove!" he thought, "I might be recognised here at any moment!"
He had a spasm of apprehension. Absurd. Supposing he was
recognised--what of it? The boulevard was a free country. And at any
moment he could disappear beyond the possibility of tracing into the
apartment of his mistress. Still, he had the spasm, and he admitted to
himself that he would not have had it if he had been staying, a
bachelor, at a hotel.
The waiter brought the newspaper. Of course it was a continental
Anglo-Saxon newspaper. But it was uncrumpled, fresh as newly gathered
fruit, and almost as appetising. He spread it out. The first thing he
saw on the front page was a little inconspicuous couple of paragraphs,
to the effect that the Governmentally appointed Commission to examine
and report on the Licensing Laws and make recommendations thereupon was
to hold its first meeting on the Wednesday, and that a number of leading
provincial and Scottish hotel-proprietors were coming to London to give
evidence. He was thunderstruck. He would have to return to England on
the morrow, Tuesday. Was he not the leader of the great national
agitation for the reform of the Licensing Laws? And he remembered that
he had not telephoned to London on the previous night. He who never
forgot anything had forgotten the nightly telephoning. Stranger still:
he had not once thought of it till that very moment! His exultation died
out like a finished candle. He became perturbed and gloomy, full of
forebodings and of disconsolate dejection. Probably, as he had failed to
arrive home on the previous night, Cousin or somebody would have called
him up at the Concorde or the Montaigne, or both, and would have been
told that he had left Paris. Be sure your sin will find you out....
He had had no expectation that the meetings of the Licensing Commission
would start so soon.
He must go and break the news to Gracie instantly. He in his turn rapped
on the window. A waiter emerged. He paid the bill and set off.
Forebodings! Forebodings! Gracie's flat was within two hundred yards of
the café. He wished it had been further away. He had crept out of the
flat like a thief, and like a thief he re-entered it. Curious that,
though he was completely innocent in the affair of the Licensing
Commission, he had a sense of guilt, as if he was conspiring against
Gracie; and he could not shake it off!
He began minutely to plan his procedure in order to minimise both the
shock of the news to her and the inevitable resulting friction. She
would no longer be the author of the wonderful book; she would be a girl
in whom emotion would supplant reason: he knew it for certain. Should he
take off his big overcoat before going into the bedroom? Or not? He
would not take it off. The sight of the overcoat would at once convey to
her the awkward fact that he had been out; she would be faced with it,
and no word said. The fewer words the better, until she had accustomed
herself to the new situation.
II
The bed-lamp was burning. She had wakened, then. No, she was peacefully,
touchingly, asleep. He had merely forgotten to extinguish the light on
departing. Where had been his wits? What had come over him? He purposely
shut the bedroom-door with a bang. The bang disturbed her. She stirred,
opened her eyes, saw him. She smiled all her love. Love for him was her
first thought. The overcoat apparently did not disconcert her in the
least.
"Darling!" She stretched her arms to welcome him. He advanced, bent
down, kissed her, tenderly fondled her, kissed her again. She held him
close to her, his thick, rough, overcoat pressed against her thin
delicate pyjamas. "Darling! Were you going out? I'm so glad you didn't
go out without me. Why didn't you wake me when you got up? I asked you
to wake me, didn't I?" Her lips were under his; she was murmuring into
his mouth. Her rich voice was soft with sleep.
"Did you?" he murmured vaguely. By a single misconception she had
deranged all his plan. He would be compelled to speak his confession.
"I thought I did."
"I shouldn't have dreamt of waking you," he said. "You looked too lovely
asleep."
She went on:
"I've just this second had a most heavenly idea. Of course we _could_
have _petit déjeuner_ here. It's not bad either. But let's go out and
have it on the boulevard. At some café."
"Fine!" he agreed. "It's a beautiful morning."
He perceived the utter impossibility of confessing that he had already
breakfasted on the boulevard. To do so would break her heart, child that
she was. He perceived too that in breakfasting alone he had committed an
outrage. No! Despite the taste of chocolate on his tongue he had
assuredly not breakfasted.
"Well," he said gently. "I'm not going out. I've been out."
"Oh! Darling!" she protested, but very lovingly. "And I did want to lie
here and watch you dress. I had a delicious dream of watching you dress
yourself. Why did you go out?"
"Only to buy a paper. Must keep an eye on the world, you know."
"Darling, you are funny. Of course you must keep an eye on your funny
world," she assented, with ravishing humorous charm.
Yes, she was unique. He would do anything for her, anything within
reason and perhaps a bit beyond reason. But he was troubled. He foresaw
terrible complications from the moment she was made to realise that he
must leave her the next morning. While he was removing his overcoat, she
slipped from under the bed-clothes and silently took the overcoat from
him and put it on, and laughed at her image in the cheval glass. Evelyn
laughed too. She seemed not a great deal shorter than himself, and she
could hardly be called thin; yet the overcoat was immensely too big for
her; it covered half her hands, reached to her ankles; and as she
wrapped it round her body it doubly enveloped her, like a cloak.
"How enormous you creatures are!" she said. "Still, it shall be my
dressing-gown. Don't you love it on me, dearest?" She glanced at him for
admiration, and turned up the deep collar. "How's that?"
"I suppose you're somewhere inside the thing," he answered. "But I don't
quite know where. Oh! Is that your head peeping out of it? What a
morsel!"
She went to the window, and drew the curtains apart and raised the
blind. Bright light rushed like an inundation into the room, filling it
to the ceiling and transforming it. The bed-lamp, which to the eye had
been the most important object, was now scarcely visible; it went on
burning unseen and neglected. She gazed forth at the blue sky.
"The morning has repented," she murmured. Then she examined her features
close in the dressing-table mirror. "Oh! My God!" She set to work on
them. She roamed around, did forty things.
"Bath!" she said; and vanished.
Evelyn sat down to wait. He wanted to read again the fatal paragraphs,
but the newspaper was in the pocket of his overcoat. How the devil was
he to tell her? Nothing had been said between them as to his departure,
but he was deeply aware that she would resent being left less than two
days after she had seduced him. (Thus did he too realistically phrase
the event to himself.) He heard faintly the water pouring into the bath.
He observed the details of the bedroom. She had passed through it like
an invading army; the havoc and the litter she had made in two minutes
were unbelievable.
"Darling!" He heard her distant voice. "Help! Help!"
He hurried into the bathroom. She lay in the steaming bath, white and
pale pink, idly splashing: amphibious; a marvellous, shameless,
indecorous vision; but from the door he could not see her face.
"Darling! Do give me that dark soap from the lavatory-basin. Is it
there, or have I----"
"It's there."
He gave her the soap. Her wet fingers touched his.
"Let me see you," she said.
He advanced obediently towards the window, and her eyes met his.
"What are you hiding from me?" she asked, as it were casually, but with
complete assurance.
They were necromancers, women; they possessed the mysterious senses of
animals. His guilt overpowered him. Well, the moment had come. He bent
down and drew the newspaper from the overcoat, which she had thrown on
the tiled floor, with her pyjamas on the top of it. He folded the
newspaper and handed it to her, indicating the paragraphs. She began by
letting it drop into the bath-water.
"That's what I was hiding from you, Mrs. Clever." He tried to make his
tone airy, amusing; but failed. She retrieved the newspaper, and read
the paragraphs.
"Well?" she demanded. Her eyes were very wide open as she looked at him
innocently, candidly, a puzzled child.
Explaining to her why it was essential that he should be in London for
the first sitting of the Commission in order to marshal the evidence for
reform, and telling her that it had long since been arranged for the
visiting hotel-potentates to stay at the Imperial Palace, where they
would count on his presence and guidance, he said:
"The most odious fact is, that I must leave Paris to-morrow morning. And
I'm most frightfully sick about it. I'd no idea that the sittings would
start so soon. And nobody else had, either."
Gracie laughed, still with assurance, but a less complete assurance.
"You needn't worry about the first day, darling, or the first three or
four days," she said, with a confident air that had in it a trace of
something akin to condescension. "You probably don't know much about
Parliamentary Commissions. I do. Daddy has had to give evidence before
them lots of times--well, two or three times--and I've often heard him
furious at their goings-on. He says they generally waste at least a week
before they get down to work, and they'll even adjourn for a week or a
fortnight or a month at the first meeting. Believe me, darling, I know!
I've not lived with daddy for nothing. No!" She was calmly quite
peremptory, as one who has settled a question once for all.
Inexperienced in Evelyn, she did not even suspect that her technique was
very badly conceived.
"That may be so," he said quietly, benevolently; "but all the same I
shall have to leave to-morrow morning."
He saw her face change into a tragic discomposure. She had continued to
splash the bath-water. She ceased. She had looked at him innocently,
candidly, like a child. Now she wept like a child--a child that simply
cannot comprehend some cruel decree of a malevolent providence. Her
grief desolated Evelyn. He was ashamed of that unspoken sardonic thought
of his which had defined their coming together as a seduction by her,
not by him. She was ingenuousness itself. Stricken, she needed
protection, defence, everything that he could give her. She was entitled
to the satisfaction of her young instincts. And withal, what a woman! He
recalled her phrase: "The morning has repented." How exquisite! How
easily it had come out! Doubtless she had lovely fancies like that
endlessly, all day, every day. The mind in the delicious, forlorn,
suffering child was amazing. To see her suffer was intolerable. All had
been happiness. Now all was woe. He must soothe her, succour her in her
irrational weakness. No. There was no 'must' about it. He most ardently
desired and yearned to soothe and succour her. He moved near her, bent
down, and took her soft cheeks in his hands, and raised her face to his.
She was still crying.
"Would you leave me alone here for a Commission?" she bubbled.
"Darling!" he murmured. "You don't know how I hate to do it. Listen.
I'll run along to the Concorde at once."
"What for?"
"To telephone to London. I shall get the communication quicker there
than here. I ought to have telephoned to the Palace last night that I
wasn't coming. But I absolutely forgot. They'll be thinking I died _en
route_." He smiled.
"Don't joke about dying," she said, loud. The joke had frightened her.
"And as for getting the communication, I'll get that for you better than
any hotel. I know a man at the Quai d'Orsay----"
She freed her cheeks and climbed impulsively out of the bath, wetting
him. And, all wet, she put on his overcoat, and ran into the
drawing-room, leaving a trail of wet footmarks. He followed. What
decision, what resource she had! She was no more the defenceless child.
She was a woman engaging in battle to retain possession of a treasure to
her priceless.
"What's your number at the Palace?" she demanded sharply over her
shoulder. He gave the number and waited. In three minutes she had used
her influence at the French Foreign Office. She rang off.
"You'll see how soon you'll get London!" she said triumphantly.
Evelyn had somehow temporarily dwindled into a nonentity. She padded
back into the bath and he after her.
"You'll see it's bound to be all right," she said. Her self-deception
was touching. She believed what she wished to believe. 'They' all did.
He knew that there was no hope whatever of it being all right. But he
did not say so.
"You might turn on some more hot water," she said. "This bath's nearly
cold."
Nevertheless the water was still giving off steam. She lay passive, all
her enchanting body immersed except the head. She lay for a long time.
At intervals she burst into a sob, and tears fell. Evelyn hung up the
damp overcoat, inside out. No sooner had he done so than she said,
brokenly:
"Let me have that, will you?" and got out of the bath, wiped herself,
got into the overcoat once more, and passed into the bedroom.
"I shall lie down for a while," she said.
And down she lay in the overcoat. Comical sight. Evelyn attentively
covered her with the eiderdown. Then the telephone-bell rang.
"What did I tell you, darling!" she exclaimed. He was relieved that she
had resumed the use of that last word, though he was well aware that
ordinarily it meant nothing in her vocabulary. Since their union,
however, he had decided that it had begun to mean all that he could have
wished it to mean. And in fact it had.
Voice of Mr. Cousin in the telephone in the drawing-room. It explained
that as he had not rung up, Oldham, recalled from his holiday, had gone
to Victoria to meet his master on Sunday night, and that on the man's
report that his master had not arrived, vain attempts had been made to
communicate with Evelyn at both the Concorde and the Montaigne, in which
places it was understood that he had left Paris for London. In answer to
this Evelyn stated with careful vagueness that he had decided to take a
brief holiday from his hotels, but had been prevented from telephoning
news of the change of plan. He enquired about the sittings of the
Licensing Commission. The answer surprised and intensely relieved him.
And then Cousin began to talk generally of Imperial Palace affairs.
Evelyn resisted the onset of business; he preferred to reserve his mind
exclusively for the affair of Gracie; but the force of habit overcame
his resistance. He wanted not to enjoy the familiar sensation of dealing
with the problems and difficulties of the hotel organism; but he enjoyed
it, and he could not deny this to himself. Such sensations had
constituted almost the whole of his emotional life, until the last two
days. Gracie had brought about a revolution in his mind, overturning a
throne; but now the deposed monarch resumed dominion in a moment.
Strange! Disconcerting! Yet somehow reassuring, comforting! His thoughts
were far too complex for analysis, especially by one who was
temperamentally hostile to the process of analysis....
III
Gracie was enveloped in his overcoat on the bed in the next room,
incalculable, exacting, an exquisite, adored, brilliant, childlike
monopolist.... "Concerning the arrangements for lodging the northern
hotel-managers. Yes. No. Yes. No. Sixth. Nothing should be higher than
Sixth...." Gracie was lying in his overcoat.... "Leave all that to
Miss Powler...." Gracie was unhappy.... The telephone
time-allowance had to be renewed twice. God! And an hour or so earlier
he had been visualising the day as a day of idle dalliance without a
programme!... No, he could not give a telephone number to Cousin; he
did not know quite where he would be. But he would telephone to the
hotel for news. "Au revoir. Au revoir." He replaced the receiver,
sighing as much in apprehension as in relief. Before returning to the
bedroom he reflected, unfruitfully.
He was amazed, and a little hurt, to find Gracie lying on her stomach,
absorbed, scribbling fast with a pencil on a block of manuscript-paper.
She must have got out of bed, for the eiderdown was on the floor. Had
she forgotten her woe and her suspense?
"Well, darling?" She did not look up; indeed she continued to write.
"It's all right," he said.
"I knew it would be," she said.
"Yes. But not in the way you think. The Chairman of the Commission has
caught a chill, and he doesn't want them to start without him. It's all
postponed for a week. The journalists didn't hear the news yesterday, so
to-day's papers are a bit behind the times."
Tenderly he restored the eiderdown. She now looked up at him, offering
her lips. He kissed her. He clasped her. If she had the whim to write,
was she not her own lord? He felt no hurt. What were hotels, mergers,
organisations, careers? Naught. He was as variable as a woman. His
ideals, his desires, changed from one minute to the next. His mental
processes (he admitted) were, then, as crude as a woman's. What alone
was certain was that the sight and feel of her affected him
overwhelmingly. His instinct to protect her, to please her, to delight
her, to produce the smile of bliss on her beautiful face, shot up
resistlessly and ruled his being.
"Darling," she said, still half absorbed in the dream of her
composition. "Breakfast. You must be terribly hungry."
"Not very," he said, with truth.
The chocolate reproached him, in the French sense of the word as well as
in the English.
"Will you order something?" she suggested.
"Oh! Hadn't you better order it yourself?" he countered. The Englishman
in him was intimidated by the prospect of demanding breakfast for two in
the apartment of a young woman!
Gracie replied:
"Oughtn't a hotel-keeper to be capable of ordering a breakfast?" She
said the words with a delicious, roguish and loving smile. And he was
undoubtedly a hotel-keeper. Nevertheless his sensitive pride felt a
prick, as if from her disdain of his calling. Moreover, could the
managing director of the world's greatest luxury hotel-merger fitly be
described as a hotel-keeper? Childish vanity! Still, the dart stuck in
the wound.
"He certainly ought," he agreed manfully. "What will you have, my dear?"
"Oh! Anything. Tea?"
He nodded and left the bedroom. His hat lay on the centre table of the
drawing-room, where he had dropped it. He put it on, ridiculously,
idiotically arguing to himself that a hat on his head might persuade the
waiter that he had merely dropped in for breakfast with the young woman.
He rang the bell, and then, ashamed, he went into the little
entrance-hall and hung the hat on the hatstand there. The waiter arrived
in long white apron, sleeved waistcoat and noiseless slippers, and
accepted the order with a bland and totally indifferent: "_Deux thés
complets. Bien, monsieur._" The folly and futility of pretending to a
waiter in such an apartment that things were not what they were became
humiliatingly clear to Evelyn. Nothing was or could be hid from the
waiter. The service was very rapid.
Gracie, having heard the front-door close a second time, called out from
the bedroom: "Is it there? You go on with yours, will you, darling. I'll
be there in half a minute."
In less than half a minute she indeed was there, in knickers and
camisole, frockless. She said, lightly:
"You think I shall be two hours over dressing. You'll see. I can dress
as quick as any woman you ever knew." She sipped the tea, tore a roll
into two halves. "I think I'll get my frock on, if you don't mind,
dearest." And she ran off, cup in hand and her mouth full of buttered
roll.
Evelyn sat miserably alone, sipped tea, ate nothing. Gracie returned for
a second cup and another mouthful; she was still frockless, but she had
exchanged her bedroom _mules_ for shoes. This time she sat close to
Evelyn.
"Of course," she said, "if it hadn't been for that lucky chill, you'd
have simply had to go to London to-morrow morning."
"I should," he answered, and added with a sigh: "Duty before--love."
"Yes," she said.
She was charming in her sweet acquiescence. She had seen reason. Tears
gone, resentment gone. Happy as a child. Throwing a kiss to him, she
vanished once more. Evelyn was still not happy. Her demeanour was
exquisite, but was it not perhaps mysteriously deceptive? His own was
deceptive. At last she returned fully accoutred, bag in one hand, gloves
in the other.
"Now I must fly," she said brightly. "The car's been waiting I don't
know how long."
"Where to?"
"To see poor Tessa, of course. I daren't neglect her. Oh! damn these
gloves!" She crunched the gloves into a ball in her hand.
"What's the matter with them?"
"They're the wrong ones."
"Give me one of them," he said.
"What for?"
"Because you've worn it." And the fact was that in that moment he did
feel a real desire for one of her gloves as a keepsake. A very odd
desire, for him, but it existed.
"Oh! Darling! Isn't that morbid?" She put her arms lovingly round his
neck, but she was reproving him. "I couldn't do _that_."
"No," he agreed, forcing a pleasant smile. "Of course you couldn't.
Excuse me one second."
He went into the bathroom, merely in order to hide from her. 'Morbid,'
was it? He would not deny that it was morbid. And what then? She ought
to have felt tremendously flattered by such morbidity. He was hurt for
the second time that morning. He waited to recover from being so
incomprehensibly an ass. Then he heard her run back to the bedroom, and
he emerged. In the drawing-room he saw the gloves conspicuously placed
on the breakfast-tray. He thought, querulously:
"She should know better than that. One glove is a keepsake. But two are
only a pair of gloves. No man ever kept a pair of gloves for a
souvenir." And he left the gloves where they lay, and sat down in front
of them, harshly ignoring the fact that she had yielded to his morbid
caprice. He thought, shamed but obstinate: "My character is changing.
Why is it changing?"
Gracie reappeared with another pair of gloves. She glanced for the fifth
of a second at the pair on the tray, and at him.
"Well," she exclaimed with self-possessed, affectionate cheerfulness. "I
must be off."
"Am I to come with you?"
"Oh _no_, darling! That wouldn't quite do, would it?"
"Why must you go just now?" He forced a new smile. If she could still be
self-possessed and affectionately cheerful, he could.
She said:
"Duty before--love, dearest."
This was her unkindest blow, for it silenced and paralysed him. He
glanced about the room while she put on the gloves. When they were on
she came to him and kissed him many times. And her clothes were so
exceedingly smart, and so fresh and cool, and her smile so perfect,
loving and unvirginal! But, though his bearing was as admirable as hers,
his heart would not be comforted.
"And when shall I see you?" he asked.
"When I come back."
She was maddening, but he refused to be maddened.
"And when will that be?"
"Oh! Not long."
"Two hours?"
"At the most, my lion."
"And supposing I want to go out, how shall I get in again?"
"Sweetest. Here's the key. Stick it under the mat. If you don't find it
there, ring. I shall be in. If I don't find it there, _I_'ll ring----"
She departed. Solitary in the flat, he felt more miserable than ever. He
was beloved--yes, perhaps; nay, surely!--but he was miserable.
Everything had gone wrong. The suddenly announced excursion to St. Cloud
was mere feminine vindictiveness. Must be!... Her 'lion' indeed!...
Then he happened to look at the breakfast-tray. Only one glove on it
among the crockery! She had needed no telling. She had understood. While
he was looking about the room, she had surreptitiously snatched a glove
away. She was astounding. There could not be another like her. Strange,
strange indeed, that this trifle should comfort his difficult heart,
exhilarate his mood into joy. But it was so. He picked up the glove,
examined it, turned it over and over, smelt its perfume. The glove was a
precious morsel of herself; she had left herself in the glove. He put it
into his pocket, and he could feel it there, an authentic treasure.
CHAPTER LVIII
THE LOVELY MILKMAID
I
Evelyn was in the drawing-room when he heard voices in the hall. Voices
of Gracie and a man--doubtless her chauffeur. Closing of the front-door.
Gracie peeped into the room. At last! She had evidently changed her
clothes while at St. Cloud. She ran into the room, smiling in happy
anticipation of the reunion. He rose. She kissed him and kissed him, and
her embraces gave him acute pleasure, pleasure whose intensity surprised
him. He thought: "Yes, I am really in love." This thought itself gave
him pleasure. She seemed not to be able to cease from kissing him.
Impossible to disbelieve that she too was passionately in love.
"You poor thing!" she said, in eager commiseration. "Have you been
sitting here ever since I left?"
"Not quite all the time," he answered. "The man came in to do the rooms,
so I went out for a walk. I left the key under the mat. When I came back
it was still under the mat. The man hadn't absolutely removed the dust,
but he'd shifted it about a bit. I waited till you'd been gone two hours
and a half or more, and then I thought I'd better be getting something
to eat. So I stepped over to Larue's. I had a cold snack there. And I've
just come in again. The key was still under the mat. How's Tessa?"
"She's quite all right. But she had to be soothed, and I decided to stay
and see her eat----"
"You haven't eaten anything?"
"Oh yes. I ate with her. Then I had to collect some clothes. I simply
hadn't a rag here."
"No. Only a wardrobe full," he interjected.
"And here I am. Sit down, because I want to sit on your knee."
"Well then, take your coat off, _and_ your hat. If you keep them on
it'll make me feel as if you were sitting on my knee in the street."
"How right you are! I was going to."
She obeyed and she sat on his knee and secured her position by putting
one arm round his neck. "You aren't cross with me for being so late?"
"Do I look cross?"
She gazed at him. "No. You look heavenly."
"Well, I know I don't look heavenly, but I'm not the tiniest trifle in
the world cross, my dear."
This was true. He had forgiven and forgotten her vindictiveness in
leaving him, if indeed vindictive she had been. But he still felt a
physical weight of oppression in the chest, such as one feels at the
announcement of the possibility of a grave misfortune. She was not
acting; she was too young and too candid to act convincingly for long
together. But he was acting. She was 'near' him (her phrase), but he,
despite love, was not near to her. He was afraid. He feared that a
disaster had only been postponed. One day, and soon, he would have to
leave her. And then--what? More tears? More ruthless tears? Yes, her
tears were ruthless. She had used tears without regard for the cost of
them to himself. Passionate love was ruthless. It could not argue. It
could not see reason. Serious trouble had been averted by an accident,
but he had had a glimpse of it. And the imminent menace of it was bound
to recur. Their situation was not defined. It continued from hour to
hour. Undefined, it could not continue for ever. They had loved, but
they had not spoken, save to assert that they loved.
And Evelyn could not bring himself to attempt to define the situation to
her. To do so would appear too practical, too prosaic. And the situation
between them was too delicate in its beauty to bear such rough
treatment. How could he say to her: "Look here, darling! All this is
lovely, but where are we?" He must obviously await his opportunity. And
to be forced to wait exasperated his nerves. Such was his character: he
had a horror of an undefined situation. He must have his programme
clearly before him if he was to be at peace within. No matter what the
programme! He preferred a harassing programme to no programme. Marriage?
He was entirely ready for marriage and all its risks. But she was just
the kind of girl to laugh at the notion of marriage. Liaison? He was
entirely ready for that too, with all its ecstasies and frightful
trammels of deceit. But was it to be understood to be permanent? Or
merely a charming, transient episode in their lives? No. The latter
alternative was absurd, for she was passionately in love with him. He
thought of her all the time, of her wishes and her happiness. He did not
think of himself, except in so far as he wanted an answer to the
question, "Where are we?" The question could not be put. It was too
crude.... He felt the weight on the chest. But her kisses were
surpassingly sweet, her companionship quite marvellous. She was utterly
his. And he loved her unselfishly.
"Shall we start out?" she whispered. "I vote for the Louvre. It isn't
three o'clock."
"The Louvre!" he objected.
"Not to see the Titian Venus?"
"But the Louvre's so hackneyed."
"That's why we must go there." She kissed him. "Have you forgotten we're
going to be tourists? What fun!"
"The Louvre then!" he yielded, and this time it was he who kissed her.
She slipped from his knee, passed into the bedroom, and returned,
laughing, in the mackintosh, and the Baedeker in her hand. Entrancing
child!
As they descended the frowsy, dubious stairs he asked:
"Got the car here?"
"Oh no! Tourists in mackintoshes don't have cars. They take taxis."
"Of course. What was I thinking of?" he agreed, joining in the
make-believe.
Outside she glanced up at the sky and said:
"I'm so glad it looks like rain, for the sake of my mackintosh."
The taxi was rolling along the rue de Rivoli, and the Louvre well in
sight, and their hands comfortably clasped, when Evelyn suddenly
signalled to the driver to stop.
"What is it?" Gracie's face changed from joy to alarm.
"We shan't go to the Louvre," he said firmly, masterfully.
"Very well, darling," she instantly acquiesced. "Anywhere you please."
Her submissiveness made him ashamed, for his tone had been a trick.
"It's closed on Mondays," he said with casualness. "We'd both forgotten
that."
"I believe you remembered it all the time," said Gracie, accusing him
with a laugh; but when she saw on Evelyn's face the beginning of a
half-serious rebuttal of the charge, she ceased laughing and put a
soothing hand on his knee. "No, I didn't really believe that. What a
tease I am!"
He had never noticed in her any tendency to tease.
"Well now, what is to be the next move?"
"I'll tell you," she replied at once. "But you can turn it down if you
don't like it. I want to buy a frock at La Jolie Laitière. Of course,
darling, you hate shopping."
"I love it," he said. "When I get the chance. Especially in a big shop."
The fact was that he was always strongly attracted by the spectacle of
the organisation of any large commercial establishment, and he
considered that in this respect department-stores were the nearest
rivals of the big hotels.
Gracie popped her blithe touristic head out of the taxi-window and
instructed the driver, and the taxi swerved into the rue des Pyrénées.
She was gleeful; the Louvre, demolished in one second, no longer existed
for her. Her mood communicated itself to Evelyn; her girlishness and the
intimacy of the taxi had lightened the weight on his chest; life was
joyous. Now they were going up the Avenue de l'Opéra. Just south of the
Place de l'Opéra there was the customary block of traffic, and scores of
vehicles were chafing against the white bâton of a pigmy policeman.
"_Arrêtez!_" cried Gracie, though the taxi was stationary at the kerb.
She opened the door and jumped down. "That's a car that daddy always
hires, in front! I remember the number on its tail."
She ran ahead a few steps and tattooed on the window of the car. Evelyn
thought: "Is she mad? What will she do next?" He too got out, judging
that the safest course was to stick to her. The door of the car swung
open. Sir Henry Savott's head appeared. Gracie eagerly kissed her
father. Already the girl was innocently chattering.
"Here's Mr. Orcham. I waited three days for weather at Dover; it was
simply frightful, and when I got on the boat _he_ came on board. He
looked after me on the train. And now he's finished his work and I've
made him take an afternoon off. We were going to the Louvre, only it's
closed on Mondays; so I'm dragging him off to do some shopping with me,
and he has to buy some cigars. You off to London by the four o'clock,
daddy?"
Sir Henry nodded.
"I thought so from the luggage."
It all sounded impeccably proper and natural, and Gracie's demeanour had
the perfect grace of easy innocence. But what was the significance of
that touch about cigars?
"And where are you picnicking, child?" asked Sir Henry.
"Oh! At St. Cloud as usual."
The two men shook hands. Sir Henry said that he had had one night in
Paris. He did not pursue the enquiry concerning Gracie. He accepted her
statements with bland and kindly indifference. It was no affair of his
where she might be picnicking, or whom she might have inveigled into an
afternoon off. The block was loosened; vehicles began to move; there was
some impatient hooting of horns because Sir Henry's car and Evelyn's
taxi were impeding the outer line of traffic; car and taxi stood their
ground, and the taxis and cars behind swerved past them.
"I say, Evelyn," said Sir Henry. "I suppose you're at the Montaigne. I
shall probably be telephoning to you early to-morrow morning. Say nine
o'clock?"
Evelyn collected his wits. If Gracie could invent misleading but
persuasive detail on the instant, he reckoned that he could do as much.
He answered nonchalantly:
"Well, I'm not quite sure about to-night and to-morrow. I've nothing
else to do here----"
"Everything all right with old Laugier?" Sir Henry interrupted.
"Quite. Quite. And I had an idea of running up to Brussels to-night.
I've heard of a proposition there that might possibly suit us."
"Really?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, and thought: "If he asks me the name of the hotel
I'm done. Ah! The Splendide would serve." He said aloud, but in a
semi-confidential murmur: "The Splendide."
"Really! But you'll be back in London to-morrow evening, Evelyn?"
"I might or I might not. It depends."
"But the Licensing Commission business. I saw it in the paper to-day."
Evelyn explained.
"Oh well, if that's so, I shan't trouble to telephone you to-morrow. It
was about the evidence." Sir Henry glanced at his watch, and then
proceeded to demonstrate that he had been studying Licensing Reform with
some care. He raised, briefly, several points. Evelyn's mind had been
void of Licensing Reform for days, and he had feared that his erudition
on the subject had left him for ever. But Sir Henry's questions brought
it all back complete, absolutely complete. He welcomed its return with
satisfaction, and answered the questions with satisfaction--and fully.
Sir Henry might have studied the matter with some care, but he, Evelyn,
would prove to him that he was an amateur talking to an expert. And
Evelyn did prove it. As for Gracie, she amiably and modestly listened to
the panjandrums, without the slightest impatience. Sir Henry glanced at
his watch again.
"I must be off. I'm not quite sure about my seat in the train. I'm going
to Berlin to-morrow."
"Films, daddy?"
Sir Henry nodded. He kissed his daughter, shook hands with Evelyn, and
was gone at once, a second traffic block having been by this time freed.
II
Ensconced again in the intimacy of the taxi, Gracie and Evelyn broadly
smiled to one another.
"Fancy seeing daddy like that! I couldn't not have two words with him,
could I?" Gracie justified herself.